Founding Applied AI Engineer — Proactive AI Agents Location: San Francisco, CA Work Arrangement: Onsite, 5 days/week Employment Type: Full-time Base Salary: 300K-500K Equity: Substantial founding-level equity Visa: Open to visa transfers and new sponsorship Relocation: Relocation support available About the Opportunity An early-stage, research-first AI company is building the next generation of personal, proactive AI agents. Rather than creating another chatbot or copilot that waits for instructions, the team is developing agents that learn how people work, understand intent, anticipate needs, and autonomously pursue objectives on their behalf. The product observes the context naturally created during work—including screen activity, conversations, and actions across tools—to understand what users are trying to accomplish and how they make decisions. It uses those signals to automate repetitive workflows and proactively identify opportunities to advance users' goals. This is a ground-floor opportunity to join a three-person founding team and help shape the product, technical architecture, and engineering culture from the beginning. The Role We're looking for a Founding Applied AI Engineer who has already built and shipped AI-powered products hands-on. You'll own 01 product areas end-to-end, working across user-facing products, agent workflows, model orchestration, and infrastructure. This is a high-agency environment. You'll be expected to make important technical and product decisions independently, move quickly, work closely with users, and take responsibility for outcomes rather than simply implementing predefined specifications. What You'll Do • Own and ship zero-to-one AI product areas end-to-end • Build and iterate on agent harnesses and agentic systems that observe user behavior, learn intent, and automate workflows • Work across user-facing interfaces, agent workflows, models, orchestration, and infrastructure • Make independent technical and product decisions around system design, reliability, and shipping speed • Work directly with users and enterprise customers to understand workflows • Rapidly prototype and iterate on solutions • Help shape product vision, technical architecture, and company culture What We're Looking For Core requirements • Experience at an AI lab, applied AI startup, or infrastructure company • Hands-on experience owning and shipping a 01 ML/AI model-based product or agentic system to production • Hands-on experience building agentic systems, agent harnesses, or model-based AI/ML products • Deep professional expertise with Python • Ability to operate across product, engineering, models, and infrastructure • Ability to contribute to product vision, ideation, and feature definition • Ability to work onsite in San Francisco 5 days per week The target profile has 2–6 years of experience as an Applied AI Engineer. Strong Additional Signals • Early-stage startup engineering experience • Founder experience • Early-hire experience at a high-growth AI startup • Major end-to-end product ownership • Strong academic background from a top-tier global institution Tech Stack Python, LLMs, agent frameworks, model orchestration, production ML systems. Working Environment This is a small, high-intensity founding environment built around extreme ownership, speed, high agency, and close collaboration. Engineers operate across research and product development rather than staying inside narrowly defined functions. Team members are expected to make strong technical and product decisions independently and help define what gets built. The team works together five days per week in San Francisco. Compensation & Equity 300K–500K base salary + substantial founding-level equity. Compensation is benchmarked to candidate market value rather than years of experience alone. Visa & Relocation The company is open to: • Visa transfers, including OPT and H-1B transfers • New sponsorship, including H-1B and TN • Relocation for candidates outside San Francisco Client Interview Process (after candidates are submitted to the client) Stage 1 — CEO Intro Call | 30 minutes | Virtual Conversation covering your background, motivation, mission alignment, interest in the company's vision, and what you're looking for. Stage 2 — Technical Interview | 45–60 minutes | Virtual Depending on your background, this may include system design, a deep dive into a feature or system you've owned, or a broader technical conversation. The team will evaluate hands-on technical depth, engineering judgment, and understanding of AI/agent systems. Stage 3 — Onsite Final | ~3–4 hours | San Francisco A half-day onsite including conversations with the team, a work trial or collaborative exercise, and an opportunity to experience the working environment.