Founding Applied AI/ML Engineer

Who is Recruiting from Scratch:

Recruiting from Scratch is a talent firm that focuses on placing the best candidate for our clients.

Title of Role: AI Engineer

Location: Remote (California preferred, NY considered)

Company Stage of Funding: Seed (Backed by top VCs including Acrew and Emerson Collective)

Office Type: Remote

Salary: $160,000 – $220,000 + Competitive Equity

Company Description

We are partnering with a stealth-mode, venture-backed startup founded by repeat technical entrepreneurs with a vision to transform customer operations using generative AI. The company has recently closed a $4M seed round led by top-tier venture firms and is building a category-defining platform for AI agents in enterprise environments.

The founders bring extensive leadership experience from leading tech companies and successful startups. They have previously scaled teams and shipped high-impact AI/ML products at companies like BetterUp and Thoughtful AI. This is an exceptional opportunity to join at the ground floor and help build both product and company alongside deeply experienced and thoughtful operators.

What You Will Do

As one of the first engineering hires, you will work closely with the founding team to design, build, and scale the AI agent infrastructure from scratch. Your contributions will directly shape the product and culture of the company.

Architect and implement AI agent orchestration systems tailored to enterprise workflows

Design RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) pipelines for integrating and querying internal knowledge bases

Develop contextual memory systems and knowledge graphs for continuous learning

Implement AI observability and performance monitoring frameworks

Create predictive models for customer health, churn, and upsell opportunities

Build natural language understanding features like sentiment and intent detection

Design closed-loop feedback systems to improve AI performance based on usage data

Ideal Candidate Background

We’re looking for engineers with a passion for applied AI who have a balanced mix of startup agility and corporate-scale experience.

5–7 years of experience in production ML engineering roles

Proven success at both startups and larger tech organizations

Track record of promotions or demonstrated career growth

Deep understanding of LLM architectures, RAG systems, and AI deployment pipelines

Strong Python experience; familiarity with FastAPI, SQLModel, Celery, PostgreSQL (with pgvector), and Redis

Frontend familiarity with React and Vite is a bonus

Experience working with AI tooling like LangGraph, Langfuse, or Agno is a plus

Preferred

2+ years of experience in a startup or founder environment

2+ years in a corporate/enterprise software engineering setting

2+ years working specifically in applied AI, including LLM-based systems or NLP projects

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent industry experience

Candidates currently based in California are strongly preferred; those in New York will also be considered

Compensation and Benefits

Salary: $160,000 – $220,000

Equity: Competitive early-stage equity package

Work Environment: Remote-first with preference for California-based candidates

Visa: Visa sponsorship is not available at this time

Position Type: Full-time

Team Structure: Direct collaboration with the founding team, including the Head of Engineering