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# Founding AI Engineer

- **Company:** CLERA, LLC
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA, United States
- **Salary:** $150,000.0 - $200,000.0
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Artificial Intelligence, Interaction Design, Recommender Systems, Reinforcement Learning, Build Management, Machine Learning Operations, Virtual Agents
- **Published:** June 29, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=ce636dc0d6b65023

## About the Role

Do you have experience in System design?, * Required: Hands-on experience building AI/ML systems in production (0-4+ years), ideally in recommender systems, matching, or social graph domains

 * Experience processing and modeling at scale (millions of data points)
 * Proficiency in collaborative filtering, graph embeddings, and ranking systems
 * Experience with reinforcement learning applied to real-world personalization
 * Familiarity with multi-channel messaging APIs and AI agent frameworks
 * Ability to design scalable infrastructure supporting complex AI workloads
 * Strong cross-functional communication skills; comfortable working alongside product, design, and data science
 * Founding mindset: you ship fast, own problems end-to-end, and thrive in ambiguity

Note: Candidates must be eligible to work in the United States without visa sponsorship.

## Description

Join the core team of an early-stage consumer social startup redefining how young people make friends in real life. The company runs AI-powered small group hangouts every week, matching people into compatible groups and handling everything end-to-end - onboarding, profiling, matching, logistics, reminders, and follow-ups - through a suite of AI agents. Thousands of users connect every month, and the platform is rapidly expanding across university campuses across the US.

As a Founding AI Engineer, you will be one of the earliest technical hires, shaping the architecture and direction of the AI systems that power the entire product., * Build a novel social graph grounded in real-world interaction data, processing millions of data points

 * Design and improve matching systems that group users into highly compatible cohorts
 * Develop collaborative filtering, graph embeddings, and ranking systems
 * Apply reinforcement learning from real-world outcomes to continuously improve personalization
 * Discover patterns and signals that lead to meaningful, lasting friendships

Communication Workflows & AI Agent Orchestration

 * Design and build agent experiences across channels where users already are (Instagram, iMessage, WhatsApp, TikTok)
 * Orchestrate a multi-agent system handling the full user lifecycle from onboarding to follow-up
 * Integrate third-party APIs and messaging services into reliable, scalable workflows
 * Contribute to human-AI interaction design to make agent experiences feel natural and effortless


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