About the Role
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.
What You'll Do
AI Matching & Social Graphs
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
What We're Looking For
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.
Compensation & Benefits
Salary: $150,000 – $200,000 USD annually
Significant founding equity
Opportunity to shape the technical direction of a fast-growing consumer AI company
Location
This is a full-time, on-site role based in San Francisco, California. The team works in-person together.
