Founding AI/ML Engineer

Company: Confidential - Seed-stage public-safety AI startup
Location: San Francisco, CA or New York, NY
Compensation: $165,000 - $250,000 + 0.3% - 1% equity
Employment Type: Full-time
Visa Sponsorship: Not available

About the Company

A seed-stage startup founded by former Palantir engineers that helps law enforcement agencies search digital evidence and solve major crimes faster, with live agency deployments and paying customers.

The Role

As an early engineer you will shape the company's AI backbone, processing massive video, audio and text datasets to surface investigative leads. The work spans backend infrastructure and applied ML: building retrieval pipelines, integrating LLMs and VLMs, and deploying secure, distributed systems in sensitive environments, end to end from data-flow design to production.

What You Will Do

• Build retrieval pipelines over large video, audio and text datasets.
• Integrate LLMs and VLMs into investigative workflows.
• Deploy secure, distributed systems in sensitive environments.
• Ship end to end, from data-flow design to production deployment.

What You Bring

• 3+ years of engineering experience across backend infrastructure and applied ML
• Experience shipping end to end in production
• Comfort in fast-paced, high-impact settings
• Eligibility for FBI/CJIS clearance (sponsored by the company)

Benefits

Free lunches and dinners, 3% 401(k) contribution, unlimited PTO, full health and dental, gym reimbursement, and FBI/CJIS clearance sponsorship.