Applied AI Engineer

Leadervest; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity up to 5%

Early-stage startup

Direct founder access

Small elite team

High ownership

Job summary

Leadervest is partnering with a well-funded, early-stage AI startup in San Francisco to hire an exceptional Applied AI Engineer. You will own product from day one and help shape the technical direction as one of the earliest engineers.

You’ll transform frontier multimodal AI research into production software, building AI applications and enterprise AI products powered by LLMs, Generative AI, and AI Agents.

Qualifications

• 3–6+ years of Applied AI or Machine Learning experience.
• Experience building and shipping production AI products.
• Experience with one or more of: Generative AI, Agentic AI, AI Agents, Computer Vision, PyTorch, CUDA, Fine-Tuning, LoRA, LangChain, LangGraph, DSPy, OpenAI, Anthropic.

Responsibilities

• Produce AI applications from concept to launch.
• Build enterprise AI products powered by LLMs, Generative AI, Agents, and Multimodal AI.
• Turn frontier research into real-world enterprise software.
• Shape product direction and influence model development as an early engineer.

Skills

Applied AI experience

Production AI

Startup environment

Tools

PyTorch

CUDA

LangChain

LangGraph

DSPy

OpenAI

Anthropic

Job description

We're partnering with a well-funded, early-stage AI startup that's building one of the most ambitious AI products I've seen this year.

They're looking for an exceptional Applied AI Engineer to help transform frontier multimodal AI research into production software and build products that could fundamentally change how knowledge workers interact with computers.

This is not a traditional Machine Learning Engineer role.

You’ll work directly with the founder, own product from day one, and help shape the technical direction of the company as one of the earliest engineering hires.

What You’ll Build

• Production AI applications from concept to launch
• Enterprise AI products powered by LLMs, Generative AI, AI Agents, Agentic AI and Multimodal AI
• Intelligent computer-use systems capable of learning workflows and automating complex tasks
• AI products that rapidly turn frontier research into real-world enterprise software
• Product features that directly influence future AI research and model development

What We’re Looking For

• 3–6+ years of Applied AI or Machine Learning experience
• Experience building and shipping production AI products
• Experience with one or more of:

• Generative AI
• Agentic AI
• AI Agents
• Computer Vision
• PyTorch
• CUDA
• Fine-Tuning
• LoRA
• LangChain
• LangGraph
• DSPy
• OpenAI

Bonus Points

• We're particularly interested in candidates who have:

• Productized frontier AI models rather than conducting purely academic research
• Built AI agents, enterprise AI platforms or computer-use products
• Worked at leading AI startups or frontier AI companies
• Demonstrated exceptional achievement in another discipline, including Olympiads, competitive programming, quantitative trading, chess, sports or entrepreneurship.

Why This Opportunity Stands Out

• Meaningful equity (up to approximately 5%)
• One of the first engineering hires
• Direct collaboration with the founder
• Small elite engineering team
• Extremely high ownership with the ability to influence product direction
• Opportunity to build products instead of simply maintaining them
• Well-funded pre‑seed company with an ambitious long‑term vision and capital to hire exceptional talent.

If you’re an AI-native builder who enjoys shipping products quickly, thrives in high‑autonomy startup environments, and wants to build the next generation of enterprise AI, I'd love to connect.

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