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# Founding AI Engineer

- **Company:** RHEA COACHING, LLC
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA, United States
- **Experience:** Experienced
- **Salary:** $165,000 - $210,000
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Software Applications, Computer Vision, Software Code Optimization, Cursor, Python (Programming Language), Performance Tuning, Software Architecture, Software Engineering, AI Infrastructure, Large Language Models, Claude Code, Model Validation, Generative AI, Agentic-AI, Data Pipelines
- **Published:** November 7, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.careerbuilder.com/job-details/founding-ai-engineer-san-francisco-ca--c81bf855-3faf-4188-8195-480f66637939

## About the Role

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Startup, Product Development, Production Systems, Performance Modeling, Problem Solving Skills, Emerging Technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Agents, Performance Analysis, * 3-8 years of software engineering experience.

 * Strong proficiency in Python and solid software engineering fundamentals.
 * Hands-on experience developing AI-powered applications, agents, or LLM-based systems.
 * Experience with model evaluations, performance optimization, and experimentation.
 * Familiarity with multimodal AI, computer vision, or advanced LLM workflows.
 * Ability to design and own production-quality systems.
 * Experience using AI-assisted development tools such as Cursor or Claude Code.
 * High ownership, strong problem-solving ability, and comfort with ambiguity.
 * Ability to work independently in a fast-moving startup environment., * Experience with post-training, fine-tuning, or model optimization.
 * Building and evaluating multimodal or agentic AI systems.
 * Computer vision or visual reasoning applications.
 * Experience building AI products from 01.
 * Previous founding engineer or early-stage startup experience.
 * Experience developing internal AI tooling and automated engineering workflows.

## Description

We're looking for a Founding AI Engineer to help build and scale advanced AI-powered products at an early-stage startup.

You'll work at the intersection of AI engineering, multimodal models, agentic systems, and product development, with significant ownership over technical architecture, model performance, and production systems.

This is a hands-on role for an engineer who enjoys solving complex problems, experimenting with emerging AI technologies, and building products from the ground up.

What You'll Do

 * Design, build, and optimize AI agents and multimodal AI workflows.
 * Improve model accuracy, reliability, and performance through evaluations, experimentation, and model optimization.
 * Develop and maintain evaluation frameworks to measure AI system quality.
 * Work with LLMs, computer vision, and other AI technologies to solve complex problems.
 * Build supporting data pipelines, internal tools, and production infrastructure.
 * Contribute across backend engineering, product development, and AI infrastructure as needed.
 * Make architectural decisions and take ownership of core technical components.
 * Collaborate directly with users to understand problems and improve product capabilities.