Sign up to access all features of our service.
  • Job search
  • Favorites
  • Create a CV
    New
  • Salaries
  • Subscriptions

Founding Engineer (AI/ML)

$130k - $170k
Full-time

Clera

About the Role

This is a founding-team engineering role at an early-stage AI recruiting marketplace, where you will own the intelligence layer end to end. Recommendation systems, ranking algorithms, and LLM-powered matching are the core of how the product works, and this role is responsible for building and evolving all of it. The impact is immediate and highly visible across the entire product.

What You'll Do

  • Own the AI/ML intelligence layer end to end, covering recommendation, ranking, and retrieval.

  • Build and iterate on LLM-powered matching that measurably improves candidate-to-role alignment.

  • Take features from problem definition to production independently, shipping on a daily cadence.

  • Architect and maintain the production data pipelines and services that models run on.

  • Work directly with the founding team to translate product goals into shipped systems.

What We're Looking For

  • 2 to 5 years of production software engineering experience, with genuine applied ML depth.

  • Hands-on experience building recommender systems, ranking algorithms, or ML-powered matching in production. This is the most important requirement.

  • Production experience with LLM APIs and shipping LLM-powered features to real users.

  • Strong proficiency in TypeScript or Python; either language is sufficient on its own.

  • Experience with production ML frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow, or equivalent.

  • Experience building and maintaining production data pipelines and services.

  • Comfortable in fast-paced, unstructured startup environments with rapid iteration cycles.

  • Existing U.S. work authorization, or eligibility for the sponsorship route currently available.

  • Strong CS fundamentals and a track record that demonstrates exceptional technical achievement, such as notable open-source contributions or standout personal projects.

  • Nice to have: React, Supabase, Prisma, Typesense, vector search and embeddings, or workflow automation tooling in production.

Compensation & Benefits

Salary: $130,000 to $170,000 annually, plus competitive founding-hire equity. Visa sponsorship is available for eligible candidates.

Location

On-site in San Francisco, CA, 6 days per week. This is an in-person role at a shared hacker house setup. Relocation assistance is available for candidates based outside the Bay Area.

Vacancy posted 3 days ago
Similar jobs that could be interesting for youBased on the Founding Engineer (AI/ML) in San Francisco, CA vacancy
  • $120k - $180k

     ...About the Role This is a founding engineering role at an early-stage construction technology startup using AI to automate blueprint analysis, material takeoffs, and cost estimation...  .... Coordinate and orchestrate multiple ML models as part of a broader AI system.... 
    Suggested
    Full time
    Relocation

    Clera

    San Francisco, CA
    2 days ago
  • $120k - $180k

     ...Description Job Description About the Role This is a founding engineering role on a small, high-impact team building AI systems that automate blueprint analysis and cost...  ...computer vision pipelines and coordinated ML model systems, rather than application-layer features... 
    Suggested
    Full time
    Relocation

    Clera

    San Francisco, CA
    8 days ago
  • $350k

     ...Alleviate Health we're building AI Agents that drastically...  ...now). Training a proprietary ML model that matches detailed patient...  ...all channels. Reverse engineering legacy healthcare systems that...  ...We're looking for exceptional founding engineers to help us realize this... 
    Suggested
    Contract work
    Night shift

    Alleviate Health Inc

    San Francisco, CA
    4 days ago
  •  ...We’re a stealth startup building AI hardware for complex manufacturers. At the intersection...  ..., and industrial manufacturers. Engineering Agent Workflows Design and implement core...  ..., and post-training Build agents and ML models that can interpret, reason over, and... 
    Suggested
    Permanent employment
    H1b
    Remote work
    Relocation
    Visa sponsorship

    Product Pulse

    San Francisco, CA
    4 days ago
  •  ...Founding Robotics Software Engineer Location: San Francisco (preferred) / US Type: Full-time · Founding...  ...platform—hardware, software, infra, and ML—designed from first principles for...  ...including Logan Kilpatrick (Google AI), Mohith Mothukuri (Physical Intelligence... 
    Suggested
    Full time

    Bracket Bot Inc.

    San Francisco, CA
    1 day ago
  • $180k - $225k

    About Scale AIScale AI is the data foundation for AI, helping organizations build and deploy...  ...world problems remains one of the hardest engineering challenges.As a Frontier Agent Engineer (...  ...enterprise software.Unlike traditional ML roles that focus on a single model or... 
    Full time

    Scale AI

    San Francisco, CA
    1 day ago
  • $180k

     ...excited to help connect talented professionals with this exceptional team! The Role We're hiring a Founding Engineer to join an early-stage company building AI-powered software and data infrastructure for healthcare organizations operating in highly regulated,... 
    Work experience placement

    People Culture Talent

    San Francisco, CA
    1 day ago
  • $300 per month

     ...intelligence. As the only vertically integrated AI infrastructure company built from the...  ....About the Role:At Crusoe, our Production Engineering team ensures the reliability and...  ...work with large language models (LLMs) or AI/ML infrastructureSRE mindset and experience (... 
    Temporary work

    Crusoe

    San Francisco, CA
    5 days ago
  •  ...millions of patients worldwide.We’re a team of engineers, clinicians, and innovators united by one...  ...a Senior Systems GPU Engineer - AI & Robotics, you will be responsible for iteratively...  ...You will work alongside research, SW/ HW/ ML engineering, regulatory, controls and... 
    Local area
    Worldwide
    Flexible hours

    Intuitive Surgical

    San Francisco, CA
    5 days ago
  •  ...commerce: verified buyer video, structured with AI, and tied to outcomes. UGC video contains...  ...is backed and supported by AI Fund.  Founded by Andrew Ng, AI Fund is backed by over $...  ...We can scale customers without bespoke engineering per store Required Qualifications... 
    Odd job
    Relocation

    career

    San Francisco, CA
    2 days ago
  • $180k - $220k

     ...Early-stage, venture-backed healthcare AI company building an AI nurse concierge for...  ...of nine Industry: Healthcare, AI. Founded: 2025 The Role Own and improve the...  ...demos) ~1 to 10 years of experience in AI/ML engineering, including systems with a voice component... 
    Full time
    H1b
    Remote work
    Relocation
    Visa sponsorship

    David Joseph & Company

    San Francisco, CA
    22 days ago
  •  ...the safety, robustness, and reliability of AI models and their deployment in the real...  ...mission. That's why we're seeking a software engineer to help us build out our trust and safety...  ...models, or are excited to learn about modern ML infra. Our tech stack ~ Our... 
    Full time

    OpenAI

    San Francisco, CA
    1 day ago
  •  ...The Opportunity AI is rapidly transforming the world. Whether it's developing the next...  ...and evaluation platform , empowering AI engineers to build and deploy high-performing, reliable...  ...the AI landscape shifts from traditional ML to generative AI and agentic systems,... 
    Full time
    Local area
    Shift work
    Afternoon shift

    Arizeai

    San Francisco, CA
    20 days ago
  • $182k - $242k

     ...CoreWeave is The Essential Cloud for AI™. Built for pioneers by...  ...turn compute into capability. Founded in 2017, CoreWeave became a publicly...  ...role As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) you will work directly...  ...in Python and modern ML/AI systems frameworks (e.g., PyTorch... 
    Permanent employment
    Full time
    Temporary work
    Casual work
    Work at office
    Flexible hours

    CoreWeave

    San Francisco, CA
    9 days ago
  • $500 per month

     ...millions of calls per month and needs an engineer who has worked at that scale before and knows...  ....You will work on-site directly with the founding team, contributing across architecture,...  ..., analyze, and evaluate conversational AI agents across voice and multimodal formatsDesign... 
    H1b

    Affinity Executive Search

    San Francisco, CA
    3 days ago
  • $160k - $200k

     ...Simbe is building the AI powered operating system for physical retail. Our autonomous...  ...for a Senior Computer Vision / Applied AI Engineer to build production AI systems that turn store...  ...improvements. The right person isa strong ML engineer, an exceptional software engineer... 
    Full time

    Simbe Robotics Inc

    San Francisco, CA
    1 day ago
  • $250k - $280k

     ...Job Description Job Description Staff / Principal Founding Engineer (Backend-Leaning) – AI Systems Platform San Francisco (in-office) $250–280K...  ...environments Bonus: AI systems, agent frameworks, or data/ML pipelines, come from top 5 CS undergrad Amazing... 
    Work at office
    Immediate start
    Flexible hours

    Xpertalent

    San Francisco, CA
    18 days ago
  • $170k - $250k

     ...Healthcare AI · Founding Team · San Francisco $170K – $250K + 0.5–1.5% Equity SF · Remote-Flexible $5M Raised · Tier-1 VCs 2–4 Founding Engineers No Visa Sponsorship AI Agents Replacing Manual Healthcare Operations A well-funded, early-stage AI startup founded... 
    Internship
    Remote work
    Visa sponsorship
    Relocation package
    Flexible hours

    Aionia Group

    San Francisco, CA
    3 days ago
  •  ...evolve in a rapidly changing ecosystem. Role Description As a Founding Engineer at Lightsage, you will design, build, and scale core infrastructure...  ...‑party tools, and experimenting with agent frameworks and AI coding systems. You will collaborate directly with customers... 
    Full time

    Lightsage

    San Francisco, CA
    2 days ago
  • $250k

     ...Instead, it gives other law firms a free AI intake receptionist, a conversational voice...  ...time. The company is bootstrapped and founded by a former startup and venture capital attorney...  ...the Role This is the company's first engineering hire, reporting directly to the Founder,... 
    Full time
    Casual work
    Work at office
    Immediate start
    Remote work
    Relocation

    Product Pulse

    San Francisco, CA
    2 days ago
  • $175k - $225k

     ...About the Role Join a fast-moving, early-stage consumer AI startup as a Founding Engineer — a rare, high-impact position working directly alongside the founder. This is a true 1-of-1 opportunity to shape both the product and engineering culture from the ground up... 
    Remote work
    Visa sponsorship

    Clera

    San Francisco, CA
    5 days ago
  •  ...Caylex is building the infrastructure layer that allows AI agents to interact with the external world. For agents to advance toward...  ...Caylex will be the infrastructure powering it. The Role As a Founding Engineer, you’ll play a central role in shaping both our product and... 
    Full time
    Work at office

    Caylex

    San Francisco, CA
    1 day ago
  •  ...Founding Engineer (Full Stack) Location: San Francisco Bay Area Type: Full-Time Compensation: Competitive salary + meaningful equity...  ...on infrastructure that combines large‑scale data systems with AI‑native agents. This is a highly autonomous, high‑leverage role... 
    Full time

    Fabrion

    San Francisco, CA
    5 days ago
  • $150k - $250k

     ...AgentMail is building the identity and communication infrastructure for AI agents, starting with email. We are looking for a Founding Engineer with backend and infra focus to architect systems for agents as the end users. Responsibilities: Design APIs that are... 
    Work experience placement
    Internship

    AgentMail

    San Francisco, CA
    1 day ago
  •  ...Founding Engineer, Forward Deployed About Backbone Care should be paid for the moment it’s delivered...  ...the first time by building the clinical AI layer for healthcare payments. Today,...  ...BS/MS in Math & CS from Stanford and led ML infrastructure at Sequoia-backed Kumo AI,... 

    Backbone

    San Francisco, CA
    5 days ago
  • $150k - $250k

     ...The opportunity Hedge is hiring a founding engineer to build the agents that run an insurance company and the infrastructure that lets them...  ...worked together launching new markets at Traba, where Rosa built AI agents to manage $20 million in revenue. Buying insurance for... 
    Work at office

    Hedge (YC P26)

    San Francisco, CA
    3 days ago
  • $150k - $250k

     ...Agentmail Engineer Opportunity Location: San Francisco, CA Type: Full-time, on-site...  ...building an API designed to give inboxes to AI agents and be the sole identity +...  ...email for your AI. We're looking for a founding engineer with strong backend and infra instincts... 
    Full time

    Agentmail (yc s25)

    San Francisco, CA
    5 days ago
  •  ...Founding Engineer Terac helps teams reach faster research breakthroughs through our marketplace of verified experts. We are building agents...  ...and extend the Terac API that research tooling companies and AI data companies integrate against. Ship the AI moderator, our... 
    Work at office
    Relocation package
    Shift work

    Terac

    San Francisco, CA
    3 days ago
  •  ...Sim is building the leading platform for AI agents-enabling developers and enterprises...  ...foundational role: Sim is hiring our first GTM Engineer to build the company's go-to-market and...  ..., and data-driven outbound campaigns Found and scale: Set the technical standard and... 
    Full time
    Work at office
    Immediate start
    Visa sponsorship
    Relocation package

    SIM USA

    San Francisco, CA
    4 days ago
  •  ...breakthroughs. We do this by building and running the world’s best data and AI infrastructure platform so our customers can use deep data insights to improve their business. Founded by engineers — and customer obsessed — we leap at every opportunity to tackle technical... 
    Worldwide

    DataBricks

    San Francisco, CA
    1 day ago

Do you want to receive more vacancies?

Subscribe and receive similar vacancies to Founding Engineer (AI/ML). Be the first to apply!