Founding AI Engineer
$150k - $200kClera
Job Description
Job Description
About the Role
This is a founding engineering role at an early-stage consumer social tech startup building AI-powered in-person social experiences for young people. You'll sit at the heart of the product, owning the two systems that make everything work: intelligent group matching and multi-channel AI agent communication. The work is technically deep and directly shapes how people form real-world friendships at scale.
What You'll DoDesign and build a real-world social graph using collaborative filtering, embeddings, ranking systems, and reinforcement learning from live interaction outcomes.
Develop large-scale personalization and group-matching algorithms that continuously improve based on real-world friendship signals.
Architect and maintain multi-channel AI agent workflows across major consumer messaging platforms (SMS, Instagram, WhatsApp, and others).
Orchestrate a suite of AI agents handling end-to-end user journeys — onboarding, profiling, matching, logistics, reminders, and follow-ups.
Build scalable backend infrastructure connecting messaging APIs, third-party services, and the core data layer.
Contribute to human-AI interaction design, making agent experiences feel natural and effortless for users.
Proven, hands-on experience building AI/ML systems in production environments.
Full-stack comfort spanning data pipelines through to user-facing AI interactions.
Familiarity with multi-channel messaging APIs and modern AI agent frameworks.
Experience with recommendation systems, social graphs, or large-scale personalization is a strong plus.
Founding-engineer mindset: you ship fast, take end-to-end ownership, and stay composed in ambiguity.
Salary: $150,000 – $200,000 per year
Equity: Founding-level equity package
Visa sponsorship: Not available
On-site in San Francisco, California, United States . This is an in-person role working alongside the founding team.
Vacancy posted 4 days ago
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