Founding ML Research Engineer

ABOUT THE ROLE Join an early-stage industrial AI team building wearable AI copilots for field technicians working in critical infrastructure. You will own key parts of the multimodal AI stack, from production vision-language systems to edge inference and real-time voice-video experiences. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Build and ship agentic vision-language pipelines for smart glasses, including tool-using visual reasoning for inspections and operational procedures. - Develop evaluation frameworks, capture failure cases, and create data and fine-tuning loops that improve model quality over time. - Adapt inference and connectivity for field conditions through model orchestration, runtime optimization, and graceful fallback. - Create real-time voice and video interfaces with conversational and proactive alert capabilities. - Fine-tune open-weight multimodal models for enterprise and on-premise deployment, including supervised fine-tuning, preference optimization, and quantization. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - Two to six years of experience shipping production vision-language or multimodal AI systems, using Python and PyTorch. - End-to-end ownership of production AI products and their outcomes, including model orchestration and multi-step agents with real tool use. - Hands-on experience with visual reasoning, model fine-tuning, evaluation design, and data flywheels; experience with edge inference or on-premise deployment is valuable. - Startup, founding-engineer, or similarly high-ownership experience, with a track record of driving greenfield work and product decisions. - Strong computer science, machine learning, or engineering fundamentals, supported by a relevant bachelor's or master's degree. - Interest or experience in computer vision, wearables, industrial AI, or other applied multimodal systems. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS Base salary: $180,000 to $230,000 annually. Visa sponsorship is available. LOCATION On-site, five days per week in San Francisco, California, United States.