Founding AI Engineer — Architect Production-Grade AI

Stealth Startup; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 320,000; Full time

Job summary

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

As we scale, you will build and lead the AI engineering team. The platform infrastructure is managed separately; your focus is making the product intelligent.

Qualifications

• 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.
• 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.

Responsibilities

• Own the intelligence layer of our platform from end to end.
• Design and build the AI systems that power our product, including reasoning, learning loops, reliability, and evaluation frameworks.
• As the company grows, build and lead the AI engineering team.
• Define the AI architecture from the ground up with no existing constraints or senior AI leadership above you.

Skills

Applied AI systems

LLM-powered apps

Python development

Architectural decisions

Independent work

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

Python

ML Ops

Job description

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

As we scale, you will build and lead the AI engineering team. The platform infrastructure is managed separately; your focus is making the product intelligent.