ML / AI Engineer

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

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Job summary

Wintermeyer Ventures in San Francisco seeks a founding-team ML/AI Engineer to architect and build the intelligent systems powering core product experiences. You own the full stack from data pipelines to user-facing AI features, collaborating closely with product and design to make complex ML feel intuitive and magical.

You will design data pipelines, embeddings, RAG pipelines, and scalable inference for real-time and batch workloads, guiding product-driven ML from experiment to production.

Qualifications

• 3+ years in ML/AI roles shipping ML-powered features with user impact
• Experience taking ML features from 0 to 1 with tangible results
• Hands-on model development with embeddings, retrieval/embedding models
• Experience with data pipelines, vector databases, RAG, semantic search infra
• Production deployment experience and familiarity with inference infrastructure
• Strong CS/Math/EECS foundation; startup or consumer product background
• Ability to reason from user experience to ML system design
• Proficiency in Python; FastAPI and PostgreSQL a strong plus

Responsibilities

• Architect and build ML and retrieval systems powering the core product experience
• Design and evolve data pipelines ingesting, enriching, and summarizing large user data
• Build scalable inference infrastructure for real-time and batch workloads
• Lead model selection, embeddings, RAG pipelines, evaluation frameworks
• Prototype quickly, then harden and ship what works
• Apply product judgment to make complex AI systems feel simple and delightful
• Collaborate with product, design, and engineering to create useful features
• Lay groundwork for ML excellence inside a small, senior team

Skills

ML/AI engineering

Data pipelines

Embeddings

Vector databases

RAG systems

Semantic search

Python

FastAPI

PostgreSQL

System deployment

Education

CS/Math/EECS or equivalent

Tools

FastAPI

PostgreSQL

Vector databases

Job description

About the Role

This is a founding-team ML / AI Engineer position at a consumer SaaS startup, where you will architect and build the intelligent systems that power core product experiences. You will own the full stack from data pipelines to user-facing AI features, working closely with product and design to make complex ML feel intuitive and magical.

What You'll Do

• Architect and build ML and retrieval systems that power the core product experience.
• Design and evolve data pipelines that ingest, classify, enrich, and summarize large volumes of user data.
• Build scalable inference infrastructure for both real-time and batch workloads.
• Lead model selection, fine-tuning, embeddings, RAG pipelines, evaluation frameworks, and quality measurement.
• Prototype quickly to explore new ML-powered product ideas, then harden and ship what works.
• Apply product judgment to make complex AI systems feel simple and delightful to end users.
• Collaborate with product, design, and engineering to create features that feel alive and deeply useful.
• Lay the groundwork for ML excellence inside a small, senior team.

What We're Looking For

• 3+ years in ML / AI roles building and shipping ML-powered features such as personalization, ranking, search, or recommendations at consumer product or AI companies.
• Demonstrated experience taking ML-powered product features from 0 to 1 with tangible, user-facing results.
• Hands-on custom ML model development with embeddings, recommendation systems, or personalization models (not limited to LLM prompting or wrappers).
• Experience with data pipelines, vector databases, RAG, and semantic search infrastructure.
• Familiarity with inference infrastructure and deployment in production environments.
• Strong CS, Math, EECS, or equivalent technical foundation.
• Background at a consumer product company or a leading AI company, ideally with early-stage startup experience.
• Ability to work backwards from user experience to determine what ML system to build.
• Comfort with ambiguity, fast iteration, and end-to-end ownership on a small, high-trust team.
• Proficiency with Python; experience with FastAPI, PostgreSQL, and vector databases is a strong plus.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary: $200,000 to $300,000 USD annually, plus equity. Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.

Location

On-site in San Francisco, CA. Remote work is not available for this position.