Founding ML/AI Engineer

Kubbly; Brooklyn (NY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary and equity

14 paid company holidays

Unlimited paid time off

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) company match

Gym membership

Home office set-up

Job summary

Kubbly is seeking a Founding ML Engineer in Brooklyn, NY, to build agentic systems for enhanced customer engagement. The ideal candidate will have over 3 years of experience in production AI, strong Python skills, and a passion for mentoring. You'll work alongside the founding team to steer product direction and implement innovative solutions. We offer a competitive salary of $120,000 - $170,000, equity, unlimited PTO, and excellent benefits. Join us at Kubbly to redefine how businesses connect with customers.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of industry experience building AI agents for production and driving business impact.
• Strong programming skills in Python and experience with RAG and fine-tuning models.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms, particularly AWS.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate closely with the founders to shape the vision and product roadmap.
• Research, architect, prototype and deploy AI-based solutions.
• Mentor and guide the team in AI expertise.

Skills

AI agents for production

Python programming

LLMOps best practices

RAG and model fine-tuning

Cloud platforms (AWS)

Tools

PyTorch

Hugging Face

Airflow

Job description

Why Kubbly

At Kubbly, we’re changing how businesses actually talk to their customers. We built a predictive AI platform that lets brands have real conversations with people through email, text, and WhatsApp. Our system figures out what each person will probably want next and knows when they’re most likely to care. We’re not sending marketing spam; instead we’re starting actual conversations. People can even finish their orders right there in the chat.

We need someone who can help us scale this whole personalized engagement. If you have a knack for building systems that can predict what people want and care whether conversations feel real or like talking to a bot, you’ll fit right in. You’d be joining at that perfect stage: proven enough that we know it works, early enough that you’ll shape how it grows.

About the role

At Kubbly, we believe AI will really change the way customer engagement works. As Founding ML Engineer you’ll be responsible for building the agentic systems and tools that would enable businesses to drive customer engagement and enable two‑way conversation. You will work alongside the founding team to drive the product roadmap, develop new features and scale the platform. You will be product‑ and customer‑obsessed.

Our philosophy: We operate on high conviction, low ego. We value passionate, data‑driven ideas. We debate vigorously to find the best solution, but then align as a team to execute.

We are mostly in‑office from our HQ in Williamsburg – 4 days per week. That’s because we’ve seen that live collaboration fosters cross‑pollination and team bonding that a fully remote team cannot experience.

What You’ll Do

• Collaborate closely with the founders to help shape the vision and product roadmap.
• Research, architect, prototype and deploy LLM‑based solutions to expand our customer engagement engine.
• Stay on top of the latest developments in AI and dev tooling and find ways to introduce them to our daily work.
• Collaborate on building internal tools, datasets, and evaluation pipelines.
• Run A/B tests and user experiments to validate hypotheses.
• Partner with founders and fellow engineers to architect and build scalable AI solutions.
• Create and maintain clear documentation while adhering to code best practices.
• Mentor and provide guidance to the team, helping them grow their expertise in AI.

Who You Are

Soft Skills

• Stubbornness on the vision, flexibility on the details.
• Flexible and curious to learn about new things constantly.
• Ready to set aside efforts that don’t lead to product‑market fit and view it as a learning opportunity.
• Customer obsession – listening to customers’ pains and working backwards to create solutions.
• Desire to work in person, next to the CTO and CEO and be involved with engineering decisions.
• Exceptional collaboration and communication skills that foster a high‑performing team environment.

Hard Skills

• 3+ years of industry experience building AI agents for production and driving business impact.
• Experience using GenAI work‑boosting tools in day‑to‑day work.
• Strong programming skills in Python.
• Experience with RAG and fine‑tuning models using PyTorch/Hugging Face.
• Proficiency applying LLMOps best practices, including prompt engineering.
• Strong skills in shell scripting (bash, zsh) and terminal multiplexers (tmux).
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS preferred) and building containerized applications.

Nice to Have

• Experience in early‑stage or high‑growth tech environments.
• Familiarity using wandb or similar platforms for tracking, visualizing, and managing machine learning experiments.
• Familiarity building and managing data and process pipelines using Airflow or other orchestration tools.
• Experience building recommendation systems that improved engagement or outcomes.
• Experience building agentic systems and a deep understanding of various architectures.

What we offer

• A great opportunity to shape the future of Kubbly and grow into leadership roles.
• Competitive salary and generous equity.
• 14 paid company holidays.
• Unlimited paid time off.
• Significant coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance and contributions for dependents.
• Generous 401(k) company match.
• Home office set‑up.
• Gym membership.
• Great views of the Manhattan skyline.

Compensation Range

$120,000 - $170,000 USD (for NY- or SF-based candidates) plus significant equity. Base salary will be a factor of location, experience and participation in the equity.