Sr. ML Engineer at Stealth AI Startup

This role is for the AI2 Incubator, an organization that supports founders in creating AI-first startups. Learn more about AI2 Incubator at ai2incubator.com.

A portfolio company of the AI2 Incubator

About the company:

We’re on a mission to help manufacturers bring the safest and highest-quality products to market. Our team uses the latest AI technology to lead the charge in the fourth industrial revolution, ensuring that the people who check the safety and quality of products have the best tools at their fingertips. We believe that when manufacturing thrives, the economy does, too, and it’s our job as tech experts to help make that happen. 

We’re a young company, which means we’re still figuring some things out and taking risks. But we’re working hard to create the perfect team and culture to tackle big challenges. We’re all about getting things done, doing things right, and not just talking about a big game. 

We are a company from the Allen AI Institute Incubator backed by the top early-stage venture capital firms in the Pacific Northwest.

If you’re ready to be part of something big and to help build a future where technology makes life better for everyone, we want you on our team. Let’s create something amazing together.

About the role:

We are seeking an innovative and driven Sr. Machine Learning Engineer to join our ambitious AI startup at a pivotal pre-seed stage. As one of the first key hires, you will play an integral role in shaping our company’s technological vision and direction. This is a unique opportunity to be at the forefront of AI innovation, where your contributions will directly impact our growth, culture, and success.

We are building enterprise software that processes and augments our customers’ proprietary know-how. Safety, trade secrets, and operational efficiencies are all impacted by the outcome of the systems you’ll build. This pressure and accountability excite you and bring the best out of you. Commercial applicability and solving concrete business problems for our customers with the right AI-powered solutions are the core of the gig.

There is a lot of ambiguity and unknowns ahead. As part of this collaboration, the expectation is that you will play an integral role in derisking the operation and help deliver the right solutions to the most concrete problems our customers are wrestling with. If this call for adventure piques your interest, if you have an appetite to test every hypothesis within the context of commercial validation, and if you want to contribute directly to the current and next industrial revolution, let’s talk.

Responsibilities:

• Collaborate closely with the CTO and the founding team to define the company’s technological vision and strategy.
• Impact early-stage technical decisions that will shape the platform & its infrastructure.
• Design, develop, and deploy machine learning models, particularly in the areas of LLMs, NLP, and document extraction
• Fine-tune pre-trained language models for specific tasks and domains
• Optimize models for inference and deploy them in production environments
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify and solve complex problems using machine learning techniques
• Conduct research to stay up-to-date with the latest advancements in LLMs, NLP, and related fields
• Implement best practices for data preprocessing, feature engineering, and model evaluation
• Contribute to the development of scalable and efficient machine learning pipelines

What we’re looking for:

• Minimum of 5 years of hands-on experience in developing and deploying machine learning models in production environments
• Proven track record of successfully delivering machine learning projects from ideation to production
• Experience with multi-modal learning, combining text, images, and other data types
• Familiarity with data privacy and security best practices in the context of machine learning
• Strong expertise in LLMs, NLP, fine-tuning, document extraction, and inference
• Proficiency in programming languages such as Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, and scikit-learn
• Experience with Transformer-based architectures (e.g., BERT, GPT, T5) and their applications
• Solid understanding of deep learning concepts, including attention mechanisms, sequence-to-sequence models, and transfer learning
• Familiarity with NLP techniques such as named entity recognition, sentiment analysis, and text classification
• Knowledge of document extraction techniques, such as OCR, layout analysis, and information extraction
• Experience with deploying machine learning models using cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure)
• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to think creatively to develop innovative solutions
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively in a fast-paced startup environment
• Master’s degree or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field preferred

Why you’ll love working with us:

Our founders have strong reputations as thoughtful, forward-thinking colleagues and mentors who cultivate talent. We’ll think intentionally and collaboratively about your career and how we build our team. Our founders’ experiences in workforce development and commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion are central to our approach. 

• Impact — Our platform will accelerate the pace of scientific discovery and therapy development to advance human health. The opportunity to build something from the ground up, define a new product, and lead a team over time in a space that has a real, positive impact. 
• Early employee impact —. As a member of the very early team, you will play a pivotal role in helping shape our product, team, and culture. For the rest of our days, no matter how many thousands of people join after you, you will always have that honor and distinction. It looks great on a resume, too.
• Early stage equity — A benefit of joining early. None of us (not our founders, nor the Allen Institute for AI Incubator) would be here if we didn’t think that our company will create tremendous value over time. 
• Access to unique learning opportunities — With the Allen Institute for AI Incubator as a cofounder, our team gets access to talks by leading AI researchers/paper authors, access to knowledge sharing amongst the community of hundreds of engineers that work for ai2incubator.com companies, and much more.
• Salary — We are a pre-seed startup and salaries will be modest, and comparative to other pre-seed startups, until we raise. You can expect salary raises that bring you closer to market as we raise money and grow. Plus, you’ll have the energy and excitement of a startup and the unique benefits and learning opportunities of taking an early risk. 
• Flexible location and hours – We are whole people with whole lives and expect that you are, too. We’ll trust each other to make progress as a team, in times and places that work for everyone. Preference for Seattle area. Travel to Seattle will be required from time to time – it’s a beautiful city!
• Visa support - We can provide visa support.