VP of Research, Machine Learning (Founding Team)

Type of employment: Permanent, Full-time
Work model: Fully remote (United States or Canada)
Ideal experience: Senior Machine Learning Research Leadership, Applied AI, Foundation Models

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 engineering leader and define the intelligence that powers the product from day one. 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

Define and lead the machine learning research strategy for the company's core AI systems.
Drive research across areas including reasoning, planning, memory, context representation, orchestration, and long-term AI behavior.
Evaluate when to build proprietary approaches versus leveraging or adapting frontier open-source and commercial foundation models.
Design evaluation frameworks that measure real-world usefulness, robustness, safety, and long-term system performance.
Lead the company's approach to AI alignment, safety, and responsible deployment.
Explore and apply modern machine learning techniques, including retrieval-augmented generation and training, mixture-of-experts, model distillation, multimodal AI, and multi-agent systems.
Partner closely with product, machine learning, and application engineering teams to translate research into production-ready capabilities.
Establish a high technical bar for research quality, engineering rigor, and sound technical judgment across the organization.

What we're looking for

Significant experience developing and deploying production machine learning systems.
Deep expertise in modern machine learning, large language models, and AI system design.
Strong technical judgment around model capabilities, limitations, evaluation, and long-term system behavior.
Experience translating research into scalable, production-ready AI products.
Passion for solving real-world problems through practical AI innovation.
Comfortable making high-impact technical decisions in fast-moving environments.
Strong leadership, communication, and mentoring skills.
A builder's mindset with a strong sense of ownership and a desire to create lasting impact.

Tech Stack

Python
PyTorch / JAX
GPU-based training and inference systems
Modern foundation models and LLM technologies

Why this role?

Founding engineering leadership opportunity at a well-funded AI startup.
Define the long-term AI research vision for a next-generation consumer product.
Help build a consumer AI platform 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 shape the company's AI strategy, technical direction, and research culture from day one.