Engineering Lead - ML Research for Live Trading

Protogon Holdings, Inc.; San Diego (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Meaningful equity ownership

Comprehensive benefits

401(k), commuter, FSA, HSA programs

Flexible time off and work-lifeBalance

Job summary

Protogon Research in San Diego, CA, seeks an Engineering Lead (ML Research Focus) to steer model development, infrastructure, and production AI systems. You will work with the CEO and research leadership to set the strategy and translate ideas into working models.

This is a hands-on lead role requiring 80% coding, 20% mentoring, with opportunities to shape AI in live trading environments and collaborate with a talented team.

Qualifications

• 4-6 years of applied ML / AI experience, including 1-2 years leading technical projects or small teams.
• Proven ability to turn ambiguous problems into clear research questions, testable hypotheses, and executable modeling work.
• Hands-on experience with modern ML techniques and production ML infrastructure; fluent in Python and PyTorch.
• Lead by doing: spend ~80% coding/research and 20% guiding technical work.

Responsibilities

• ML Research & Model Development: shape research agenda, design, develop and deploy production ML models for live trading.
• Technical Leadership & Mentorship: lead day-to-day engineering work, set standards, mentor engineers, hire and onboard.
• AI-Enabled Engineering Acceleration: drive adoption of AI tools and workflows across engineering functions.
• AI Systems, Data Pipelines & Model Quality: build data pipelines, training workflows, evaluation tooling, inference systems.
• Execution Against Trading Objectives: identify modeling opportunities and translate into actionable ML work in early-stage environment.

Skills

Applied ML Engineer

Applied Researcher & Problem Solver

Strong Technical Foundation

A True Lead

Education

PhD in ML/AI or similar research experience

Tools

Python

PyTorch

Job description

Protogon Research in San Diego, CA, seeks an Engineering Lead (ML Research Focus) to steer model development, infrastructure, and production AI systems. You will work with the CEO and research leadership to set the strategy and translate ideas into working models.

This is a hands-on lead role requiring 80% coding, 20% mentoring, with opportunities to shape AI in live trading environments and collaborate with a talented team.