Founding Engineer - ML Research

About this role

A Series A AI/ML startup seeks a Founding ML Research Engineer to build and scale its research infrastructure from the ground up. You'll design and train cutting-edge models (LLMs, diffusion, multimodal), develop scalable experimentation pipelines, and rapidly prototype research insights into production systems while shaping technical culture.

What you'll do

• Design, train, and evaluate ML models including LLMs, diffusion models, and domain-specific architectures
• Build scalable experimentation pipelines for data, model training, and evaluation workflows
• Optimize training throughput and data quality in collaboration with infrastructure teams
• Contribute to open research, internal benchmarks, and emerging generative AI techniques
• Prototype and productionize research findings into usable tools and models
• Establish foundational technical standards for research rigor, documentation, and reproducibility

What they're looking for

• PyTorch, JAX, and/or TensorFlow
• Transformer and diffusion model architectures
• RLHF and reinforcement learning techniques
• Distributed training and large-scale model optimization
• Data processing and evaluation metrics
• Research paper implementation and prototyping
• Multimodal and generative AI systems
• ML systems engineering

Benefits

• Equity participation as a founding team member
• Remote flexibility (on-site in Mountain View)
• Opportunity to shape technical culture at early-stage company
• Work with frontier AI labs and enterprise clients
• Access to cutting-edge AI research and tools