Principal AI Architect

Job Description

Job Description

Draup is a Series A-funded agentic AI company building the intelligence layer for how global enterprises make workforce and go-to-market decisions. We work with 250+ enterprise clients — including 5 of the Fortune 10 — processing 1B+ job descriptions, 850M+ professional profiles, and signals from 100+ labor databases.

We are now building our Silicon Valley engineering team — a small, senior group focused on next-generation AI research and product.

Location: San Francisco, SoMa — minimum 4 days per week in-office.

What you'll do

• Define and own the architectural vision for next-generation AI systems: novel agent architectures, reasoning systems, and proprietary model development.

• Prototype and evaluate breakthrough AI capabilities — predictive modeling, autonomous signal synthesis, multi-modal intelligence — that create defensible IP.

• Set the technical foundations: data architecture, model serving, agent orchestration, and inference infrastructure for a multi-year product horizon.

• Evaluate and adopt emerging AI paradigms (multi-agent reasoning, RLHF, retrieval-augmented fine-tuning) before they are mainstream.

• Establish engineering standards, architecture review processes, and IP documentation practices for the team.

What we require

• BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, AI/ML, or related field. PhD or equivalent research depth preferred.

• 5+ years in AI/ML engineering with at least 2 years in a principal engineer or lead architect role.

• Demonstrated history of building original AI systems that became products — not implementations of existing patterns.

• Deep expertise across: LLM training and fine-tuning, agentic system design, knowledge graph construction, large-scale data modeling.

• Comfort operating in greenfield conditions: high ambiguity, high ownership.

• Patents, published research, or shipped products with clear proprietary differentiation are strong signals.

• No visa sponsorship. Must be authorized to work in the US without current or future employer sponsorship.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.