AI Engineer

Collate; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 350,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Impactful work in healthcare

Ownership in product and culture

Equity opportunities

Job summary

An innovative AI healthcare startup seeks an AI Engineer to build and refine models for their products. This role involves optimizing machine learning systems for real-world life science applications and requires hands-on experience in deploying AI solutions. Join a pioneering team dedicated to improving healthcare outcomes with a competitive salary range of $150,000–$350,000 annually, based in San Francisco.

Qualifications

• Expertise in NLP applications and LLMs for life sciences.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced startup environment.

Responsibilities

• Optimize prompts and improve robustness of LLMs for NLP applications.
• Build pipelines for reliable, safe AI deployment.
• Collaborate with teams to translate user needs into AI-driven features.
• Develop evaluation frameworks for accurate and trustworthy models.
• Experiment rapidly while maintaining high standards.

Skills

Hands-on experience building and deploying ML/AI systems

Strong foundation in deploying search and retrieval systems

Ability to bridge research and engineering

Motivation to apply AI to life sciences

Job description

About Collate

Collate is an AI document generation platform for life sciences. We automate paperwork with AI, helping our customers get life‑saving innovations to patients years faster. Collate is an end‑to‑end solution, powering every step of drug, diagnostic, and medical device development—from concept to market.

Our CEO Surbhi Sarna is a former General Partner at Y Combinator. Surbhi founded nVision Medical, which developed a new method to detect ovarian cancer and was acquired by Boston Scientific. Our CTO Nate Smith is a former Visiting Partner at Y Combinator and founder of Lever. Our AI researchers, engineers, and designers have worked at Google, Nvidia, Meta, Netflix, Amazon, Airbnb, Hippocratic AI, and Grail, and 40% of our team are former founders.

We’re a small, elite team, with over $30M in seed funding from top investors (Redpoint, First Round Capital, Conviction, and Y Combinator) and leaders in healthcare and AI. This is a rare chance to join at the ground floor of a company with world‑changing potential, experienced founders, and resources to execute at scale.

About the Role

We’re looking for an AI Engineer to help build and productionize the models and systems that power Collate’s products. You’ll work at the intersection of machine learning, software engineering, and product — turning cutting‑edge research into reliable, user‑facing capabilities.

This is an opportunity to shape how advanced AI is applied in Life sciences — a space where performance, safety, and trust matter as much as innovation. As one of the first AI‑focused engineers at Collate, you’ll define the standards for how we evaluate, and deploy models that directly impact drug and medical device development.

What You’ll Do

• Prompt optimization, red‑team, and improving robustness of LLMs for life‑science NLP applications within Collate’s products.
• Build pipelines and infrastructure to deploy AI systems reliably, safely, and at scale.
• Collaborate with product, design, and engineering teams to translate user needs into AI‑driven features.
• Develop evaluation frameworks to ensure models are accurate, fair, and trustworthy in real‑world life science settings.
• Experiment rapidly, while balancing iteration speed with the rigor required for high‑stakes applications.
• Create tools and workflows that make AI development more efficient across the team.

What We’re Looking For

• Hands‑on experience building and deploying ML/AI systems in production.
• Strong foundation in deploying search and retrieval systems and NLP applications.
• Ability to bridge research and engineering — from prototyping models to shipping them in user‑facing products.
• Comfort working in an early‑stage startup where ambiguity is high and ownership is expected.
• Motivation to apply AI to life sciences in a way that prioritizes reliability, safety, and impact.

Why Join Collate?

Impact: Build systems and experiences that touch real patients and providers, improving healthcare outcomes.

Ownership: Shape both our product experience and our engineering culture from the start.

Learning: Collaborate with a uniquely interdisciplinary team—AI researchers, healthcare leaders, and experienced startup builders.

Upside: Join a company early enough to have meaningful equity and career‑defining impact.

The base salary range for this role is $150,000–$350,000 USD annually, depending on experience and level (Tier 1, San Francisco).