Founding AI Engineer - San Francisco, California

MissionHires; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive base salary: $200K–$300K

Meaningful equity ownership: 0.1%–1%

Visa sponsorship available for exceptional candidates

Job summary

MissionHires is looking for a Founding AI Engineer based in San Francisco to lead ML research and production efforts. The role involves designing models for parsing unstructured data and collaborating with founders on product strategy.

The ideal candidate excels in Computer Vision, has a strong academic background, and experience in high-paced startup environments. The position offers a competitive salary and meaningful equity ownership.

Qualifications

• Master’s or PhD in a relevant field from a top-tier institution.
• Strong academic research background with relevant publications.
• Up to 6 years of experience in ML research.

Responsibilities

• Own the full ML research lifecycle from problem formulation to deployment.
• Design Computer Vision and Document AI models.
• Lead architectural improvements to vision models.

Skills

Computer Vision

Document AI

High ownership mindset

Strong Python proficiency

Education

Master’s or PhD in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Modern ML frameworks

Job description

MissionHires is hiring a Founding AI Engineer to own end-to-end ML research and productionization for cutting‑edge Computer Vision and Document AI. You’ll design and deploy state‑of‑the‑art models for parsing unstructured enterprise data, build scalable data/evaluation pipelines, lead architectural improvements (including VLMs and 3B–7B models), and partner directly with the founders on product and technical strategy. This is an in‑person role in San Francisco with high ownership, fast iteration, and meaningful equity.

Responsibilities

• Own the full ML research lifecycle: problem formulation, experimentation, model training, evaluation, optimization, and deployment
• Design and improve state‑of‑the‑art Computer Vision and Document AI models for unstructured enterprise data
• Lead architectural improvements to vision models and VLM‑based document understanding systems
• Build scalable data pipelines and evaluation frameworks to continuously measure and improve performance
• Transition research prototypes into reliable, production‑grade systems in collaboration with engineering
• Establish best practices for experimentation, reproducibility, benchmarking, and iteration
• Work directly with founders to shape product direction and long‑term technical strategy
• Contribute to research credibility through publications, benchmarks, or open‑source contributions when appropriate

Requirements

• Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Vision, Document AI, or closely related field (top‑tier institution preferred)
• Strong academic research background; multiple relevant publications preferred
• Up to 6 years post–Master’s/PhD experience with end‑to‑end ML research ownership
• Experience in 0‑to‑1 startup environments with high ambiguity and rapid iteration
• Background at a leading research lab (e.g., DeepMind, FAIR, Microsoft Research, OpenAI, Anthropic) strongly preferred
• Deep expertise in Computer Vision, Document AI, multimodal learning, or related domains
• Proven experience building or significantly improving model architectures (beyond fine‑tuning)
• Experience with smaller foundation models (approximately 3B–7B parameters)
• Strong Python proficiency and familiarity with modern ML frameworks
• Experience training and deploying models for parsing and understanding unstructured data
• Hands‑on experience building evaluation pipelines and integrating models into production systems
• Comfort moving between theory, experimentation, and production deployment
• Strong product intuition with ability to prioritize research for business impact
• High ownership mindset and bias toward action
• Willingness to work in person and commit to an early‑stage company’s intensity

Benefits

• Competitive base salary: $200K–$300K
• Meaningful equity ownership: 0.1%–1%
• Visa sponsorship available for exceptional candidates (including new H1B applications)
• Opportunity to shape the technical foundation of a high‑growth AI company.