Founding AI/ML Lead

We're looking for a Founding AI/ML Lead to join our early-stage team and define the technical heart of a category-defining product. This is a rare ground-floor opportunity to own the end-to-end AI stack and work side-by-side with our founding team. We're building an AI agent that tackles one of the most exciting frontiers in creative AI: autonomous product design.

Instead of slow, text-heavy product documents and bottlenecked design cycles, our agent uses generative AI to align software teams visually from day one. It learns their style, standards, and goals to produce design outputs that feel like they were crafted by in-house experts. Our vision is to evolve this agent into an autonomous teammate for any design task, and ultimately, a fully agentic product team capable of ideating, designing, and shipping software automatically.

What You'll Do:

• Build and ship early-stage AI/ML systems that directly impact our users.
• Prototype quickly, experiment boldly, and turn ideas into real, working features.
• Choose the right models, train best-in-class models for design, and deploy and scale them.
• Work closely with the founder, product, and design teams to shape our roadmap.
• Push the limits of what's possible with generative AI, personalization, and intelligent retrieval.
• Set best practices in AI/ML engineering and help grow the team.

• 5+ years of software engineering/ML engineering experience, with at least 2 years of experience building generative AI or ML products.
• Strong Python skills and experience with frameworks like PyTorch or TensorFlow.
• Comfort with the full AI lifecycle—from data wrangling to production deployment.
• A proven ability to ship 0→1 projects in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
• Clear thinking about how AI connects to real product and business value.

Bonus Points:

• Experience in retrieval, indexing, personalization, or NLP.
• Startup or early-stage experience.
• A track record of mentoring or leading other engineers.
• A graduate degree (PhD/Masters) in AI.
• Has shipped products to millions of users or customers.

• Location: San Francisco, CA (Hybrid)
• Salary: $175k - $235k
• Equity: 0.4% - 1.25%
• This is a full-time, hybrid position. Ideally, candidates can work in person 3-5 days a week in San Francisco.

Due to the high volume of applications we anticipate, we regret that we are unable to provide individual feedback to all candidates. If you do not hear back from us within 4 weeks of your application, please assume that you have not been successful on this occasion. We genuinely appreciate your interest and wish you the best in your job search.

Commitment to Equality and Accessibility:

At MLabs, we are committed to offer equal opportunities to all candidates. We ensure no discrimination, accessible job adverts, and providing information in accessible formats. Our goal is to foster a diverse, inclusive workplace with equal opportunities for all. If you need any reasonable adjustments during any part of the hiring process or you would like to see the job-advert in an accessible format please let us know at the earliest opportunity by emailing [email protected].

MLabs Ltd collects and processes the personal information you provide such as your contact details, work history, resume, and other relevant data for recruitment purposes only. This information is managed securely in accordance with MLabs Ltd’s Privacy Policy and Information Security Policy, and in compliance with applicable data protection laws. Your data may be shared only with clients and trusted partners where necessary for recruitment purposes. You may request the deletion of your data or withdraw your consent at any time by contacting [email protected].