Founding AI Engineer

About the Role An early-stage consumer social tech startup — using AI to combat loneliness among Gen Z by organizing real-world small-group hangouts every Saturday — is looking for a Founding AI Engineer to join their core team in San Francisco. This is a high-impact, high-ownership role at the heart of everything the product does: AI matching, social graph intelligence, and multi-channel agent orchestration. The company has thousands of users meeting in person every month and is rapidly expanding across hundreds of university campuses in the US. What You'll Do You will own two critical technical areas: AI Matching & Social Graphs Build a novel social graph based on real-world interactions, not online engagement Design and improve group-matching systems using collaborative filtering and graph intelligence Develop embeddings and ranking systems to drive compatibility at scale Apply reinforcement learning from real-world friendship outcomes Build large-scale personalization pipelines across a growing dataset of millions of data points Communication Workflows & AI Agent Experience Design and build multi-channel AI agent experiences across platforms like Instagram, iMessage, WhatsApp, and TikTok Orchestrate a suite of AI agents covering onboarding, profiling, matching, logistics, reminders, follow-ups, and continuous learning Integrate messaging APIs, third-party services, and the core database layer into cohesive, scalable workflows Craft human-AI interactions that feel natural and reliable across every channel What We're Looking For Required 4–10+ years of experience building AI/ML systems in production Comfort working across the full stack — from data pipelines to user-facing agent interactions Familiarity with multi-channel messaging APIs and agent frameworks A founding mindset: you ship fast, own problems end-to-end, and thrive in ambiguity Nice to Have Experience with recommendation systems, social graphs, or large-scale personalization Background in consumer social or marketplace products Compensation & Benefits Salary: $150,000 – $200,000 USD annually Equity: Meaningful founding equity stake In-person team culture in San Francisco Visa sponsorship is not available for this role. Location This is a full-time, on-site role based in San Francisco, California . Remote work is not available.