Applied AI Engineer

About the company:

Our client is a newly founded AI lab building a new class of agents. These agents take ownership of complex goals and work on them autonomously for days, then months, and eventually indefinitely. The founding team comes from some of the strongest AI research and engineering environments in the world. Their first application is self-improving products: agents that learn what customers are trying to achieve, build and deploy solutions, measure the results and keep iterating.

About the role:

You’ll build the product that lets users hand off complex outcomes to long-running agents and keep track of them. This is a zero-to-one, full-stack seat covering user-facing interfaces, agent workflows, model orchestration and infrastructure. It is a founding-level role with real ownership of major product areas, fast prototyping and direct work with users. The bar is exceptional engineering paired with genuine product judgment and taste.

What you’ll own:

• Zero-to-one AI product areas, end to end
• Full-stack build across interfaces, agent workflows, model orchestration and infrastructure
• Turning frontier model capabilities into reliable products that solve real user problems
• Working directly with users to understand their workflows and iterate quickly
• Helping shape product, architecture and culture as an early team member

What you’ll bring:

• Exceptional engineering ability, paired with strong product judgment and taste
• A track record of building successful user-facing products, ideally from zero to one
• Strong intuition for turning frontier AI capabilities into simple, useful products
• Comfort across product, engineering, models and infrastructure, not a narrow specialist
• Evidence of exceptional ownership: you founded a company, owned a major product, or shipped consequential work at a frontier technology company
• High agency, ambition and speed, with a steep learning curve and a founder mentality
• Intensity and high ownership, and comfort in a brand-new, figure-it-out-yourself environment

Background that stands out:

• 2+ years of experience. Strong applied and product engineers are welcome, as are exceptional outliers and senior leads
• Product experience at a frontier technology company, or a successful startup of your own, including an exit
• “Spike” backgrounds are a plus: top of a category in chess, sports, IOI/IMO or other competitive fields, or quant work

Nice to have:

• Agentic-product pedigree at top AI coding and agent companies (think Cursor, Cognition, Decagon, Sierra-tier)
• Zero-to-one founder or early-team experience
• Olympiad, quant or world-class competitive background

Who will thrive:

• A product-obsessed full-stack builder who wants to own zero-to-one agent products at a brand-new company
• Someone who turns frontier capability into simple, reliable experiences users love
• High-intensity and high-autonomy, allergic to hand-holding and narrow lanes
• Founder-minded and aligned with the long-horizon agents vision, a “spike” who has been world-class at something

The details:

In the office in San Francisco, full-time, with an intense, high-commitment working rhythm. Visa sponsorship is supported. Applicants should be based in the Bay Area or able to relocate.