Founding AI Engineer / Member of Technical Staff

Advatix Inc.; New York (NY); On-site; USD 125,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Retirement/401k

Health Insurance

Vision Insurance

Dental Insurance

Unlimited PTO

Paid Short- & Long-term Disability Insurance

Paid Life Insurance

Equity: 0.20% - 1.50%

Job summary

Advatix Inc. in New York is seeking a Founding AI Engineer / Member of Technical Staff to design and ship machine learning systems crucial for public safety. This role involves direct collaboration with founders and investigators to transform digital evidence into actionable insights.

The ideal candidate will have over 4 years of experience in software engineering, particularly in AI/ML environments. You'll have a hands-on approach to building reliable, production-ready systems that agencies trust, contributing to high-stakes investigations.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience, especially with ML/AI.
• Experience building production-ready systems with deep learning.
• Comfortable working end-to-end in a fast-moving startup.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

• Design and ship the ML systems for law enforcement.
• Own core AI and backend systems for evidence processing.
• Collaborate with detectives to turn feedback into features.
• Contribute across the stack to maintain a robust AI platform.

Skills

Software engineering experience

Backend fundamentals

Machine learning systems

Python programming

Data pipelines design

Collaborative skills

Tools

Python

TypeScript/React

Job description

Founding AI Engineer / Member of Technical Staff

Location: New York, NY, United States

Department: Information Technology
Type: Full Time

Job Title: Founding AI Engineer / Member of Technical Staff
Pay: $125000.00–$190000.00/yr + 0.20%-1.50% Equity
Schedule: Full time, Permanent Role
Relocation Assistance: Available

Job Overview

As a founding AI engineer, you will design and ship the machine learning systems that power a digital analyst for public safety, working directly with founders and investigators to transform digital evidence into searchable insight. You will own the core backend and AI architecture, building robust retrieval and RAG pipelines that process vast volumes of unstructured data including calls, reports, and transcripts. This role requires a hands‑on approach to prototyping with LLMs, embeddings, and vector databases, followed by hardening those ideas into production‑ready systems that law enforcement agencies can trust for high‑stakes investigations. You should bring at least four years of professional software engineering experience with strong backend fundamentals in Python and modern distributed systems. Success in this position demands a proven track record of shipping ML/AI systems to real users and the ability to design sophisticated data pipelines and evaluation frameworks. You will collaborate closely with forward‑deployed engineers to translate field feedback into concrete ranking improvements and feature sets. Beyond core AI work, you will contribute across the full stack to ensure the entire platform remains monitored and maintainable. This is a high‑ownership opportunity to define technical best practices and influence product strategy at the ground floor of a mission‑driven startup.

Responsibilities

• You’ll design and ship the ML systems that power Closure’s “digital analyst” for law enforcement—working closely with the founders, Forward‑Deployed Engineers, and investigators in the field.
• Own core AI and backend systems that ingest, process, and search across large volumes of evidence (calls, reports, documents, transcripts, and more).
• Design and implement retrieval / RAG pipelines for unstructured and structured data, making it fast and reliable for investigators to find what they need.
• Prototype with new models and tools (LLMs, embeddings, vector databases, observability stack), then harden the best ideas into production systems agencies can trust.
• Collaborate closely with Forward‑Deployed Engineers and users to turn real‑world feedback from detectives and prosecutors into concrete ML features and ranking improvements.
• Contribute across the stack when needed (APIs, internal tools, evaluation dashboards) to keep the overall AI surface area robust, monitored, and maintainable.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience with strong backend fundamentals (distributed systems, APIs, data modeling) in a modern stack (e.g., Python + TypeScript/React or similar).
• Hands‑on experience building and shipping ML/AI systems used by real users, ideally involving LLMs or other deep‑learning models (not just research or PoCs).
• Experience with retrieval / RAG or similar architectures over unstructured text or multi‑modal data (documents, transcripts, logs), including designing data pipelines and evaluation approaches.
• Comfortable working end‑to‑end: from understanding investigator workflows and problem framing, to designing experiments, to deploying and monitoring models in production.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills; able to work directly with founders, Forward‑Deployed Engineers, and non‑technical stakeholders in a small, fast‑moving, mission‑driven team.

Ideal Candidate

• Field‑Driven Engineer – Strong full‑stack engineer (Python + modern frontend) who enjoys leaving the office, sitting with users, and seeing how software actually gets used in the wild.
• Customer‑Obsessed Problem Solver – Comfortable building trust with detectives and agency leadership, asking good questions, and turning messy requirements into clear product and technical decisions.
• High‑Ownership Operator – Thrives in tiny, fast‑moving teams, takes full responsibility for deployments and outcomes, and is happy to do whatever the situation requires (from debugging to running training sessions).
• Mission‑Motivated – Energized by improving public safety and the criminal‑justice system, and comfortable working with sensitive, sometimes difficult case material.
• Startup‑Ready – Has prior experience in early‑stage or talent‑dense environments and is excited by ambiguity, rapid iteration, and having a big say in how the product and company evolve.

Must‑Have Requirements

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience, with strong backend fundamentals (distributed systems, APIs, data modeling) in a modern stack (e.g., Python + TypeScript/React or similar).
• Hands‑on experience building and shipping ML/AI systems, ideally with LLMs or other deep‑learning models used by real users (not just research or prototypes).
• Experience with retrieval / RAG or similar pipelines over unstructured text or multi‑modal data (documents, audio transcripts, etc.), including designing data flows and evaluation approaches.
• Comfort working in a fast‑moving startup environment with high autonomy, ambiguity, and end‑to‑end ownership of projects.
• Strong communication skills – able to partner with founders, FDEs and investigators, explain technical trade‑offs, and turn messy requirements into robust systems.

Benefits

• Retirement/401k
• Health Insurance
• Vision Insurance
• Dental Insurance
• U.S.-based role
• Equity: 0.20% - 1.50%
• Bonuses based on company performance
• We contribute 3% to your 401(k), regardless of your own contribution
• Unlimited PTO
• Paid Short‑ & Long‑term Disability Insurance
• Paid Life Insurance
• Criminal Justice Ready: Given the sensitivity of our work, we support employees through FBI background checks / CJIS clearance process as needed

We are committed to an inclusive workplace that does not discriminate against race,nationality, religion, age, marital status, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender, and orgender identity. We believe in diversity and encourage anyqualifiedindividual to apply. We are an EEOCEmployer.