Applied AI Engineer – Long-Horizon Agents

AI Pulse; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 250,000 - 500,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Founding-level equity

visa sponsorship

Frontier AI challenges

Job summary

AI Pulse in San Francisco is hiring founding-level engineers to build long-running autonomous agents that learn from user workflows and ship end-to-end products. The role covers UI, agent workflows, model orchestration, and infra, with strong emphasis on turning frontier models into reliable offerings.

You will own from zero to one, shape product and architecture, and work directly with a high-ownership founding team. Full-time, in person, on-site in SF.

Qualifications

• 3–6 years in; exceptional outliers and senior leads welcome too.
• Proven track record shipping products people love.
• Strong ability to translate model capabilities into simple, useful products.
• Experience across product, engineering, models and infra.
• Evidence of ownership: started a company, led a product, or shipped impactful work.

Responsibilities

• Own whole product areas, zero to one, end to end.
• Own the surface where users hand complex outcomes to agents and stay in control.
• Own the full stack: UI, agent workflows, model orchestration and infra.
• Turn frontier model capabilities into durable products for real users.
• Engage with users to learn workflows and ship iterative improvements.
• Shape product, architecture, and culture as one of the first engineers.

Skills

World-class engineering

Product mindset

Shipping products

Model capabilities

Ownership

Frontier AI

Founder mindset

Job description

What if an agent didn't stop after one task, but kept working on your goal for weeks, months, or indefinitely?

That's the bet behind a brand-new AI lab in San Francisco. The founding team comes from leading frontier AI labs, autonomous-driving and robotics AI, big-tech research and a top quant firm. Their thesis: once agents run long enough, raw capability stops being the hard part. Knowing what the human actually wants is. So they're building agents that take sparse direction and messy evidence gathered over time, form a lasting picture of the goal, and then plan, act, check outcomes, recover from mistakes and keep improving. The first application: products that improve themselves, where agents learn what customers are trying to get done, build and ship the solution, measure it and iterate.

They're hiring 4 founding-level engineers.

What you'll own

• Whole product areas, zero to one, end to end
• The surface where users hand complex outcomes to agents and stay in control
• The full stack: UI, agent workflows, model orchestration and the infra underneath
• Turning what frontier models can do into products that hold up for real users, not demos
• Time with users: learning their workflows and shipping iterations fast
• Shaping product, architecture and culture as one of the first engineers

What you bring

• World-class engineering skills, combined with a sharp eye for product and real taste
• A track record of shipping products people love, ideally from zero
• Sharp instincts for turning new model capabilities into something simple and useful
• Range across product, engineering, models and infra: a builder, not a narrow specialist
• Proof of serious ownership: you started a company, ran a major product, or shipped work that mattered at a frontier-tech company
• Roughly 3–6 years in; exceptional outliers and senior leads are welcome too
• High agency, high speed, founder mindset. You don't need hand-holding.

Bonus points

• You've built at a top AI coding or agent company
• Founder or early-team experience (an exit is a strong signal)
• A spike: top of your field in olympiads (IOI/IMO), competitive programming, chess, sports, or quant trading

What's in it for you

• $250k–$500k base + 1–5% equity
• Founding-level ownership, alongside an exceptionally strong founding team
• Open, hard problems at the frontier of long-running autonomous agents
• Visa sponsorship available; if you're outside the US, expect to go via an O-1

Good to know

• Full-time, in person in San Francisco, 9-9-6. Intense and high-ownership by design.

Process: informal talk with a founder technical deep-dive on your applied-AI work paid 2–3 day work trial in person (expenses covered)* offer

Does this sound like you? If you're a match, we'll be in touch within 3 working days.