Founding AI Engineer

Stealth Startup; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Stealth Startup in San Francisco is seeking a Founding AI Engineer to own the intelligence layer of our platform from end to end. You'll design and build AI systems powering the product, including reasoning, learning loops, reliability, and evaluation frameworks.

As the company scales, you'll build and lead the AI engineering team, define the architecture from the ground up, and operate with entrepreneurial ownership, with no senior AI leadership above you.

Qualifications

• Proven experience deploying applied AI systems into production.
• Experience taking LLM-powered applications from prototype to production.
• Strong background building applied AI systems.
• Deep understanding of modern agentic AI architectures and workflows.

Responsibilities

• Own the intelligence layer of the platform end to end.
• Design and build AI systems powering the product, including reasoning and learning loops.
• Lead the AI engineering team as the company scales.
• Define AI architecture with entrepreneurial ownership.

Skills

Applied AI in prod

LLM production

Python development

Architectural ownership

Job description

Logistics moves the physical world. It's one of the largest industries on earth — and it still runs on people, spreadsheets, and decades-old systems stitched together by hand. Almost none of it has been touched by modern AI. That's where we need your help.

We're reinventing logistics from the inside. Not another dashboard that saves an operator ten minutes — AI coworkers that do the work itself.

That's the frontier you'd be working with us to define. For forty years, software was sold against IT budgets to make people a little faster. The next generation of software is deployed against labor — it does the job and is measured against payroll, not seats. We're building AI that transforms how logistics organizations operate.

Why Join Us

• Well-funded startup with 36+ months of runway, backed by leading early-stage investors.
• Real product traction with production deployments, active design partners, and a growing data flywheel.
• Massive market opportunity with thousands of logistics enterprises ready for AI-powered automation.
• Experienced leadership team with a track record of building, scaling, and successfully exiting software companies.

About the Role

We're looking for a Founding AI Engineer to own the intelligence layer of our platform from end to end. You'll be responsible for designing and building the AI systems that power our product, including reasoning, learning loops, reliability, and evaluation frameworks. As the company grows, you'll build and lead the AI engineering team.

The platform infrastructure—including data pipelines, integrations, security, and cloud infrastructure—is managed separately. Your focus is making the product intelligent.

You'll have the rare opportunity to define the AI architecture from the ground up with no existing technical constraints or senior AI leadership above you. We're looking for someone with an entrepreneurial mindset who thrives in ownership and is excited to shape the future of AI-powered enterprise software.

What We're Looking For

Required Experience

• Proven experience deploying applied AI systems into production and owning them through real-world usage.
• Experience taking LLM-powered applications from prototype to production, where accuracy and reliability matter.
• Strong background building applied AI systems rather than conducting ML or model research.
• Deep understanding of modern agentic AI architectures and workflows.

Preferred Qualifications

• Expertise with evaluation frameworks, guardrails, and AI system reliability.
• Experience identifying failure modes and designing robust mitigation strategies.
• Strong Python development skills and experience building production-grade AI applications.
• Entrepreneurial mindset with the ability to work independently and make architectural decisions.