Founding Forward-Deployed ML Engineer

Job Description

Company Description

Foothill Ventures is a technology-focused venture fund based in Los Altos, California. We make pre-seed, seed (preferred), and A-round investments in startups across software, life science, and deep tech. We grew out of the TEEC Angel Fund, which made seed-stage, highly successful bets on companies like Zoom Communications, Carta, Plus.ai, WeRide.ai and Ginkgo Bioworks, all subsequent Unicorns.

We provide support to our portfolio companies in various areas, including recruiting and talent acquisition. This role is posted on our website for our portfolio companies.Job Description

About our portfolio company - Tessel

Tessel builds the evidence engine powering the medical AI models that regulators clear, hospitals trust, and patients depend on.

In medical diagnostics, models that interpret medical images inform real clinical decisions. The barrier to deployment is rarely performance–it’s proof. Demonstrating how a model behaves and where it breaks is slow, manual, and often inconclusive. FDA submissions stall. Hospital pilots fail. Strong results on paper aren't enough.

We believe safety-critical AI needs more than snapshot metrics. Every AI system should come with a living evidence record that evolves over time, allowing stakeholders access to information about real model behavior. This should shape how we build, regulate, and adopt AI so the best technology reaches patients faster, not despite the scrutiny, but because of it.

The role

You work directly with medical imaging companies preparing AI-powered devices for FDA 510(k) or De Novo submissions. You own customer engagements end-to-end: running meetings, defining evaluation questions, leading investigations, and delivering evidence that materially affects go/no-go decisions.

The focus isn’t building models, but understanding and demonstrating behavior. Where does the model generalize? Where does it break? What trade-offs are being made? What uncertainty remains? The output is a defensible behavioral understanding, supported by rigorous evidence–clear enough to inform internal decisions, build customer confidence, and withstand regulatory review.

You combine practical ML skills with the customer-obsession and product thinking. You solve problems for real customers and take those learnings to build a platform that scales.

Trajectory: This role grows with the company. Near-term: define how evidence delivery scales. Long-term: Head of Product or Head of Engineering, depending on where you have the most impact.

Qualifications

Strong judgment around ML evaluation: able to design investigations, interpret ambiguous results, and reason about failure modes in real systems

Experience with messy, real-world medical data and incomplete or imperfect ground truth

End-to-end analytical ownership in Python, from data ingestion through defensible analysis and communication of results

Comfortable representing technical findings directly to customers and non-technical stakeholders

Operates effectively with incomplete information and evolving problem definitions

Bonus:

Familiarity with FDA pathways, medical imaging, or regulated ML environments.

This role is not for you, if:

You just want to build novel ML models for performance improvements on a benchmark

You need clearly defined tasks and stable scope to be effective

You're uncomfortable presenting findings that still contain uncertainty

You want pure technical work without customer relationship ownership

Why Tessel

Define the future of safe AI.

The work you do determines whether a model reaches patients or stalls in regulatory review. Whether a hospital adopts or walks away. Whether a company can stand behind what they're shipping.

We hold ourselves to high standards: intellectual honesty about what's known and unknown, rigor in methodology, and judgment that prioritizes patient safety. If you’re motivated by ownership, accountability, and real-world impact–not incremental optimization or hype–Tessel is for you.

Additional Information

Foothill Ventures is an equal opportunity employer. All aspects of employment including the decision to hire, promote, discipline, or discharge, will be based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state, or local law.

Full-time