We are looking for an AI/ML Engineer with 3+ years of experience (3-5 years is the sweet spot) to join the Applied Research team at a fast-scaling AI edtech startup and help build an AI-powered learning product for young children. We want a strong software engineer who is either an AI-native product engineer with research literacy or a research engineer who has shipped. You should want to own hard, open-ended problems end to end, from research question to a feature that kids use.
What will you be doing?
Design evals that measure how well the AI tutor teaches, engages, and adapts to kids.
Build and improve the agent harness that decides what to teach next and which modules to show each child.
Develop learner profiling systems that track each child's performance and personalize lessons over time.
Improve how the tutor perceives child speech, a hard problem most existing systems handle poorly.
Turn fuzzy product opportunities into measurable research problems, then ship the results weekly.
This is a hybrid Direct Hire role based in San Francisco, CA.
- Strong software engineer with full-time industry experience (1+ year minimum, 3-5 years ideal) who has shipped AI features users interact with; not data science or MLOps profiles
- Hands-on experience building and operating evaluation or measurement systems, such as AI evals or LLM evaluation frameworks
- Solid ML foundations: can read recent ML papers and implement findings (model training experience is a plus)
- Experience building and shipping AI features or AI-forward products into production, or a strong ML research background
- Uses AI tools heavily in their own engineering workflow and can own problems independently from day one
- Experience with LLM inference optimization (low-latency inference at scale) is a plus
- Experience training and fine-tuning large language models (PyTorch, distributed training frameworks) is a plus
- Experience building AI systems where end users or children directly interact with the AI is a plus
- Backgrounds from AI-native product companies, frontier AI labs, or learner-facing edtech are a strong fit
- Degree in Computer Science or equivalent ML engineering experience
- Current US work authorization to start immediately (OPT STEM with over 6 months remaining acceptable)
- Ability to work hybrid in San Francisco, CA (3 days/week)
- Mission-driven, with interest in education or AI for good