Founding AI Engineer

Founding Engineer – AI & Cyber Defense

The Company

A $5M-backed team of ex-OpenAI and serial deep-tech founders developing next-generation cyber capabilities for U.S. defense and intelligence - focused on an emerging class of digital operations that goes beyond traditional vulnerability exploitation are on the lookout for a Founding AI Engineer to join their team. 

What You'll Be Doing

• Build LLM-powered applications measured against real mission outcomes, designing evaluation frameworks (prompts, gold sets, automated tests) and orchestrating models for reliability and speed
• Prototype across dozens of tasks, embed with end users in the field, ship fast, and tie every line of code back to national-security impact.

What We're Looking For

• Hands-on experience shipping LLM-driven systems with real evaluations and downstream metrics
• Strong Python engineering skills; comfortable with prompt engineering, retrieval, fine-tuning, or lightweight RL
• 0→1 builder who thrives on ambiguity, learns fast, and works close to users
• Principled decision-maker willing to make hard tradeoffs in high-stakes environments
• Must be eligible for U.S. security clearances (work involves DoD/IC contracts)

What's In It For You

• Ground-floor equity in a $5M pre-seed company backed by Village Global, Neo Ovo, and 8090 Industries
• Work on problems with national consequence alongside a CEO from OpenAI/Stanford and a serial deep-tech founder
• Direct user access - embed with operators, get real-time feedback, see your work deployed in the field
• San Francisco-based (on-site focus) with some travel; small, high-agency founding team of 2

Apply now for immediate consideration!