Co-Founder & CTO

Clera Labs, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity ~28%

In-person role - San Francisco

Live product data

Job summary

Clera Labs, Inc. seeks an exceptional technical co-founder and CTO to own research strategy and product development. You’ll join as an equal founder with ~28% equity, full-time, to build a proprietary training platform for creative AI on top of a live product generating valuable data.

You'll lead data infrastructure, model decisions, and the first engineering/research team, working closely with creators, brands, and investors in San Francisco.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience building reward models and RLHF.
• Experience with causal inference on observational data.
• Shipped real products with data-driven evaluation.
• Production ML at scale and online experimentation.
• Multimodal generation, agents or planning systems experience valued.
• Track record recruiting strong technical talent.
• Willingness to commit full-time as an equal co-founder.

Responsibilities

• Own technical and research strategy for a proprietary platform.
• Build data infrastructure connecting briefs, submissions, and outcomes.
• Design systems to evaluate, rank, critique, generate, and improve creative work.
• Develop allocation policy for campaign budgets.
• Make decisions on frontier models, fine-tuning, RL, and research directions.
• Create infrastructure for creator workflows, campaigns, experimentation, training, and inference.
• Set standards for data quality, consent, privacy, measurement, and evaluation.
• Recruit and lead the first engineering and research team.
• Work with creators, brands, and investors.

Skills

Reward modeling

Causal inference

Production ML

RLHF

Multimodal generation

Talent recruitment

Data infrastructure

Job description

About the Role

General Creative is seeking an exceptional technical co-founder and CTO to own research strategy, product development, and team building. You'll join as an equal founder with ~28% equity, working full-time to build a proprietary training and evaluation platform for creative AI on top of a live product already generating valuable data. This is a rare opportunity to shape technical vision and company direction from the ground up, not a conventional CTO hire.

What You'll Do

• Own technical and research strategy, from current workflows to a proprietary training and evaluation platform for creative agents.
• Build data infrastructure connecting briefs, submissions, generation traces, decisions, critique, and campaign outcomes.
• Design systems that evaluate, rank, critique, generate, and improve creative work.
• Develop the allocation policy that directs campaign budget (and simultaneously shapes dataset collection).
• Make core decisions on frontier models, fine-tuning, post-training, RL, and original research directions.
• Build reliable infrastructure for creator workflows, brand campaigns, experimentation, training, and inference.
• Set standards for data quality, consent, privacy, measurement, and model evaluation.
• Recruit and lead the first engineering and research team.
• Work directly with creators, brands, and investors.

What We’re Looking For

• Hands-on experience building preference or reward models (RLHF, reward modeling, ranking subjective outputs, evaluation systems).
• Comfort with causal inference on observational data: selection bias, off-policy evaluation, adaptive experimentation, or validating proxies against delayed outcomes.
• Shipped real products used by people; research alone is not sufficient.
• Ready to commit full-time (6-7 days per week) as an equal co-founder with early-stage uncertainty.
• Experience at a frontier AI lab or research organization of similar calibre is a strong signal.
• Production ML at scale: bandits, sequential allocation, online experimentation, or ads/marketplace/recommender systems tied to business outcomes.
• Multimodal generation, agents, planning systems, or latent-variable modeling experience valued.
• Track record recruiting strong technical talent and owning programs end-to-end.
• High agency, intellectual honesty, low ego, and genuine interest in creativity and human feedback.

Compensation & Benefits

• Equity: ~28% as equal co-founder
• Cash compensation: Discussed directly based on circumstances and fit
• Location: In-person, San Francisco

Location

In-person, San Francisco.