Founding Engineer - ML Research

About this role

A Series A AI/ML startup seeks a Founding ML Research Engineer to build scalable ML infrastructure and ship research-driven features. You'll design and train cutting-edge models (LLMs, diffusion, multimodal), develop experimentation pipelines, and help establish technical standards for a fast-moving team.

What you'll do

• Design, train, and evaluate ML models including Transformers, diffusion models, and domain-specific architectures
• Build and maintain scalable experimentation pipelines for data, model training, and evaluation workflows
• Optimize model quality and training throughput in collaboration with data and infrastructure teams
• Translate research papers and emerging techniques into rapid prototypes and production-ready code
• Contribute to open research, internal benchmarks, and documentation standards
• Define technical culture around reproducibility, rigor, and best practices

What they're looking for

• Python and ML frameworks (PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow)
• Transformer and diffusion model architecture design
• RLHF and reinforcement learning techniques
• Experimentation pipeline design and optimization
• Multimodal and generative AI techniques
• Model reproducibility and documentation
• ML systems engineering and scalability
• Research paper implementation and prototyping

Benefits

• Salary: $220,000–$300,000 annually
• Competitive equity package commensurate with founding-team role
• Well-funded Series A startup with resources to execute
• Work directly with founding team in fast-paced environment
• Opportunity to shape technical culture and standards from ground up
• Focus on cutting-edge AI research (multimodal, synthetic data, agentic systems)