Founding AI Engineer
$150k - $200kClera
Job Description
Job Description
About the Role
An early-stage consumer social tech startup — using AI to combat loneliness among Gen Z by organizing real-world small-group hangouts every Saturday — is looking for a Founding AI Engineer to join their core team in San Francisco. This is a high-impact, high-ownership role at the heart of everything the product does: AI matching, social graph intelligence, and multi-channel agent orchestration.
The company has thousands of users meeting in person every month and is rapidly expanding across hundreds of university campuses in the US.
What You'll DoYou will own two critical technical areas:
AI Matching & Social Graphs
Build a novel social graph based on real-world interactions, not online engagement
Design and improve group-matching systems using collaborative filtering and graph intelligence
Develop embeddings and ranking systems to drive compatibility at scale
Apply reinforcement learning from real-world friendship outcomes
Build large-scale personalization pipelines across a growing dataset of millions of data points
Communication Workflows & AI Agent Experience
Design and build multi-channel AI agent experiences across platforms like Instagram, iMessage, WhatsApp, and TikTok
Orchestrate a suite of AI agents covering onboarding, profiling, matching, logistics, reminders, follow-ups, and continuous learning
Integrate messaging APIs, third-party services, and the core database layer into cohesive, scalable workflows
Craft human-AI interactions that feel natural and reliable across every channel
Required
4–10+ years of experience building AI/ML systems in production
Comfort working across the full stack — from data pipelines to user-facing agent interactions
Familiarity with multi-channel messaging APIs and agent frameworks
A founding mindset: you ship fast, own problems end-to-end, and thrive in ambiguity
Nice to Have
Experience with recommendation systems, social graphs, or large-scale personalization
Background in consumer social or marketplace products
Salary: $150,000 – $200,000 USD annually
Equity: Meaningful founding equity stake
In-person team culture in San Francisco
Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.
LocationThis is a full-time, on-site role based in San Francisco, California . Remote work is not available.
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