Product Builder-Principal

Lever, Inc.; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 230,000 - 275,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Long-term incentives

Carried interest

Virtual shares in AI Fund

Job summary

AI Fund is seeking a Principal Builder in Mountain View, CA to steer deep-tech bets from idea to funded company. You’ll combine technical insight with business judgment to validate markets and shape co-founded ventures with elite founders and corporate partners.

The role emphasizes rigorous analysis, hands-on AI work, and close collaboration with partners across the Build program, ending with potential follow-on investment and portfolio support.

Qualifications

• Technical ability with frontier AI and hands-on coding experience.
• Experience as engineer, product manager, or founder with 0‑to‑1 work.
• Track record working with elite founders and executives with strong time discipline.
• Ability to communicate rigor, persuade through influence, and maintain mature opinions.
• Formal STEM background or equivalent rigorous experience.

Responsibilities

• Identify, shape, and validate new company ideas with partners and founders.
• Build a compelling business case: size market, model, GTM, and thesis.
• Decide bets based on market size and AI differentiation.
• Help recruit the founder and align engineers in residence.
• Lead 12‑week Build with guidance for product, user, and GTM.
• Support post-build investments and portfolio support.

Skills

Technical AI knowledge

Engineering background

Product sense

Communication & influence

Side project / hackathon experience

Education

STEM or research degree

Job description

Mountain View, CA | AI Fund | Full-time

AI Fund is a venture studio founded by Dr. Andrew Ng in 2017. We build AI companies from the ground up with corporate partners, investors, and elite founders, backed by a fund from top-tier global corporations and VC firms. Our purpose is to build AI companies that move humanity forward.

A Principal Builder decides which bets are worth making. The core of the role is technical insight applied to business judgment: seeing how a deep tech idea can uniquely solve a market need, and bringing the intellectual heft that elite founders and corporate partners respect in a co-founder. You drive each idea forward until it's either falsified and ended, or handed to a newly formed company.

What you'll do

• Work with commercial partners, including corporates, VCs, and LPs, and with elite founders to identify, shape, and validate new company ideas.
• Build the business case for ideas that hold up: market sizing, business model, go‑to‑market plan, and a clear written thesis for the company.
• Decide which ideas to bet on, based on the size of the market opportunity and how uniquely AI can solve it.
• Help recruit the founder. Explain the idea to potential founders and Engineers in Residence, and help bring the right person on to lead the Build.
• Drive AI Fund's co‑founding of companies with partners and founders, mainly through product, user, and go‑to‑market guidance during the 12‑week Build.
• Build the recommendation on whether AI Fund should invest at the end of the Build, then support the AI Fund partner on follow‑on investment and portfolio support.

What you need

• Technical ability, a real understanding of frontier AI, and hands‑on experience coding with AI.
• Experience as an engineer, product manager, or founder, including scrappy 0‑to‑1 work.
• A track record of working with top talent, such as elite founders and senior executives, where both sides earn each other's respect and you make efficient use of their time.
• The ability to communicate with rigor, persuade through influence, and carry strong opinions with maturity.
• A STEM or research degree from a top research university, or an equivalent background where you've built the same rigor.

Who this is for

• A technically deep person whose business judgment is their strongest asset. This role shapes ideas, influences founders, and pushes AI Fund forward.
• Someone who still builds on weekends, at hackathons or on side projects, and who works well with everyone from elite founders to corporate partners.

$230,000 - $275,000 a year

Long-term incentives, including carried interest and virtual shares in AI Fund.

At AI Fund, we are committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation and related medical conditions), national origin, age, physical and mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information (including characteristics and testing), military and veteran status, and any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.