Staff Machine Learning Engineer (Founding Team)

Type of employment: Permanent, Full-time
Work model: Fully remote (United States or Canada)
Experience required: Senior / Staff level Machine Learning Engineering

Why join this opportunity?

Our client is an early-stage, well-funded AI startup building a next-generation consumer AI platform designed to help people automate everyday tasks, workflows, and errands through intelligent, real-world task execution.

This is a rare opportunity to join as a founding engineer and help shape both the product and the engineering foundation from the very beginning. You'll work alongside an experienced leadership team in a fast-paced, high-trust environment where ownership, curiosity, and execution are highly valued.

What you'll do

Design and build production-grade machine learning systems from end to end.
Develop and maintain data pipelines, training workflows, evaluation frameworks, and inference infrastructure.
Fine-tune and optimize large language models using modern techniques such as LoRA, QLoRA, SFT, DPO, and model distillation.
Improve GPU utilization, latency, memory efficiency, scalability, and system reliability.
Build robust evaluation pipelines covering model quality, safety, robustness, and performance.
Collaborate closely with software engineers to integrate AI capabilities into production applications.
Make pragmatic technical decisions and ship high-quality solutions in a fast-moving startup environment.

What we're looking for

Proven experience building and deploying production machine learning systems.
Strong Python programming skills.
Hands-on experience with PyTorch and/or JAX.
Experience working with large language models and modern fine-tuning techniques.
Solid understanding of ML infrastructure, inference optimization, and distributed systems.
Strong ownership mindset with the ability to work independently in a small, collaborative team.
Excellent communication and problem-solving skills.

Why this role?

Founding engineer opportunity at a well-funded AI startup.
Help build a consumer AI product from zero to scale.
Fully remote across the United States and Canada.
Small, high-calibre engineering team with direct access to leadership.
High-trust, flexible work environment.
Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage.
401(k) with employer match (U.S.).
Visa sponsorship available where applicable.
Opportunity to make a meaningful impact on both the product and engineering direction from day one.