Founding Engineer

New York

Machine Learning

Permanent

Our client, an early-stage AI startup, is hiring a Founding Engineer to join the team in New York. The successful candidate will play a key role in shaping both the product vision and technical direction of the business, building cutting-edge AI systems that accelerate scientific discovery through intelligent automation, multimodal machine learning and advanced data platforms.

Responsibilities

Design, develop and deploy enterprise-grade AI solutions that empower scientific teams.
Build advanced multimodal AI systems, including computer vision models, speech-to-text capabilities and intelligent AI agents.
Develop scalable machine learning pipelines and data infrastructure to support scientific applications.
Create AI models that analyze experimental data, uncover insights, predict outcomes and optimize processes.
Convert complex laboratory data into structured, high-quality datasets for machine learning development.
Work closely with research partners and customers to gather feedback, validate solutions and continuously improve products.
Shape the company’s technical architecture, engineering practices and long-term AI roadmap.
Partner with founders and scientific leaders to drive product development and technical decision-making.
Deliver robust, production-ready software with a focus on speed, quality and scalability.

Skillset

Proven experience designing, building and deploying production software within a startup, research environment or leading technology organization.
Strong machine learning expertise with deep knowledge in at least two of the following areas: Geometric Deep Learning, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), Diffusion Models, Generative AI or ML Interatomic Potentials.
Experience developing and delivering AI-powered products that solve real-world customer challenges.
Strong software engineering capabilities across backend development, machine learning infrastructure and cloud-based environments.
Hands-on experience building scalable data pipelines, ML workflows and production AI systems.
Ability to take ownership across the entire product lifecycle, from initial concept and experimentation through to deployment and optimization.
Comfortable working in a fast-paced startup environment with a high level of autonomy, ownership and accountability.
Strong analytical, problem-solving and communication skills with the ability to collaborate across technical and scientific teams.