Founding Machine Learning Engineer

About Lanai

Lanai is building the first Enterprise AI Observability and Security platform, creating the missing infrastructure layer for the AI revolution. Our browser-based (to start) technology gives large enterprises unprecedented visibility into how AI is actually being used across the enterprise—down to the prompt level—solving critical challenges that no other platform can address.

At Lanai, you'll be tackling fascinating technical problems at the intersection of browser extension development, edge computing, and real-time data analysis. Our engineering challenges include detecting AI interactions across thousands of interfaces, building sophisticated local ML classification systems, and creating intuitive visualizations that make complex AI usage patterns immediately actionable.

Founded by technical leaders who built core infrastructure at Google, VMware, Meta and Splunk, we've raised capital from Lux Capital (Hugging Face, Databricks), Juxtapose, F7 Ventures, and BAG Ventures. Fortune 1000 companies are already deploying our technology to discover shadow AI, protect sensitive data, and optimize their AI investments.

Living our values enables us to foster trust, take risks, and achieve extraordinary results together:

Curiosity: Question openly, learn quickly, share knowledge

Community: Celebrate diversity, unite in purpose, practice empathy

Commitment: Maintain high standards, honor promises, focus on impact

Clarity: Communicate directly with care, bring focus to ambiguity

Located in Palo Alto, our highly-technical, nerdy (and nice!) small team brings together enterprise leaders from SignalFx, VMware, Google, and Meta. We're advised by industry leaders including Fredrick "Flee" Lee (CISO at Reddit), Raghu Raghuram (former VMware CEO), and Yvonne Wassenaar (former CIO of New Relic).

The Technical Challenge

As our Founding Machine Learning Engineer, you'll build the world's most accurate, real-time data classification, redaction and recommendation AI system. This isn't incremental improvement—it's creating something unprecedented. Your code will power systems that understand, protect, and optimize sensitive data flowing through AI at enterprise scale.

The Impact You’ll Have

Design and build critical systems that handle enterprise data flows with unprecedented accuracy and speed

Develop multi-dimensional risk scoring models that evaluate data compromise, bias, legal, and security threats

Create highly scalable custom classifiers that operate at sub-200ms latency with 99.8% accuracy

Combine ML, security infrastructure, and privacy engineering challenges that directly impact how Fortune 500 companies operate

Build small PyTorch models and on-device models through quantization and distillation of fine-tuned open source models

What You Bring

Deep technical expertise in ML/AI and NLP (3-6+ years experience)

Experience building and scaling production ML systems from 0 1: Early employee experience at successful startups OR led new product development at major tech companies

Enterprise domain understanding

Experience with cloud environments and production data pipelines at scale

Deep expertise in large-scale streaming data processing and real-time classification

Background in multi-dimensional risk scoring and pattern recognition

Strong programming skills in Python and ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow)

What We Offer

Founding Engineer Ownership: Design and build critical systems from the ground up versus joining established companies where core architecture decisions are already made

Unmatched Financial Upside: Early equity in a SaaS AI governance and data analytics company with early exercise and Qualified Small Business Stock tax benefits

Exceptional Leadership Access: Work directly with co-founder/CEO Lexi Reese (Google, Gusto, Meta), co-founder/chairman Steve Herrod (original CTO of VMware, investor @ General Catalyst + Juxtapose), CTO Rajesh Raman (supported tech infra that took Meta/Google public before moving to SignalFX, Splunk) and CPO Mohit Mehta (Splunk, Nvidia)

Health, dental, and vision insurance

Unlimited PTO

Note: Research shows qualified candidates, especially from underrepresented groups, often hesitate to apply unless they meet 100% of listed qualifications. If you're excited about this role but don't check every box, we strongly encourage you to apply. We're committed to building a diverse team and would love to consider your unique background."

Lanai is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate representation of all backgrounds and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.