ML/AI Founding Engineer

ML/AI Founding Engineer

Location: San Francisco, CA (On-site)
Job Type: Full-time
Salary: $170,000 - $220,000 per year + Competitive Equity
Visa Sponsorship: Available

About the Role

We are hiring a Founding ML/AI Engineer to build and own the intelligence layer of an AI-powered pilot training platform. This is a hands-on founding role where you'll design, develop, and deploy production machine learning systems that transform cockpit audio, avionics telemetry, and ATC communications into automated flight debriefs.

You'll work across the full ML lifecycle—from data ingestion to production inference—and help shape the company's technical direction as it scales from seed stage toward Series A.

Responsibilities

• Design and build production-grade ML systems for multimodal AI applications.

• Develop and improve audio intelligence pipelines, including:

  • Speaker diarization
  • Speech-to-text
  • Cockpit audio separation

• Build ML models for:

  • Maneuver detection
  • Performance scoring
  • Safety event classification

• Architect AI reasoning systems that combine audio, telemetry, and aviation knowledge to generate flight debriefs.

• Create evaluation frameworks and feedback loops to continuously improve model performance.

• Own the ML infrastructure from data processing through deployment and monitoring.

• Collaborate closely with product and engineering teams in a fast-paced startup environment.

Required Qualifications

• 4–7 years of experience building and deploying production ML/AI systems.
• Strong experience with NLP, Speech AI, Audio ML, or related domains.
• Experience building end-to-end machine learning pipelines.
• Strong Python and PyTorch skills.
• Experience with LLMs, RAG, prompt engineering, and fine-tuning.
• Experience working at an early-stage startup or building products from scratch.
• Comfortable taking ownership and making architectural decisions.
• Experience using AI development tools such as Cursor or Claude Code.
• Available to start immediately or within a short notice period.

Preferred Qualifications

• Aviation, aerospace, or defense industry experience.
• Experience with speaker diarization, speech recognition, or audio signal processing.
• Experience with multimodal AI systems.
• Experience with AWS, Kubernetes, and MLOps.
• Previous founding engineer or technical leadership experience.
• BS or MS in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.

Tech Stack

• Python
• PyTorch
• Large Language Models (LLMs)
• RAG
• Prompt Engineering
• Speech-to-Text
• Speaker Diarization
• Audio ML
• NLP
• Time-Series Analysis
• AWS
• Kubernetes
• MLOps
• Cursor
• Claude Code

Compensation & Benefits

• Base Salary: $170,000–$220,000
• Competitive founding equity
• Visa sponsorship available
• Opportunity to own the ML platform from day one
• Work with cutting-edge AI in aviation and defense
• Significant growth opportunities as the company scales toward Series A