# Founding AI Engineer

> JeffreyM Consulting · San Francisco, United States · Full-time · Posted 2026-09-14

**Salary:** USD 160,000–200,000

**Workplace:** on_site

**Department:** Direct Placement/Contract to Hire

## Description

**San Francisco, CA | Onsite | Full-Time**

We're seeking a highly autonomous **Founding AI Engineer** to join a seed-stage agentic AI company applying multimodal AI to construction and architecture. Its agents analyze blueprints to determine whether buildings are safe, buildable, and compliant with regulations such as ADA, Wildland-Urban Interface, structural, and fire-safety requirements.

This is a highly autonomous founding engineering role focused primarily on improving the accuracy of multimodal agents.

The core workflow is:

**HYPOTHESIS → EXPERIMENT → IMPLEMENT → EVALUATE → ANALYZE → ITERATE**

Most of the engineer's time will be spent designing and running experiments against the evaluation framework rather than interacting with customers. The role can fit either a strong software engineer moving into AI research or an established AI/ML engineer who is also a fast builder.

**What You'll Own:**

-   Multimodal-agent accuracy
-   AI evaluation frameworks
-   Autoresearch
-   Experimental feature development
-   Experiment sweeps
-   Computer-vision experimentation
-   Evaluation analysis
-   Lightweight data engineering
-   Internal tooling
-   Occasional web application improvements
-   Building-code domain knowledge
-   Product dogfooding
-   Limited weekly user interaction

## Requirements

-   3+ years professional experience
-   Extremely independent and self-directed.
-   Able to unblock themselves without constant guidance.
-   High-velocity prototyping and shipping.
-   Strong software engineering or AI/ML engineering background.
-   Rigorous understanding of evaluation/evals.
-   Strong experimental/research instincts.
-   Able to generate hypotheses rather than simply implement assigned ideas.
-   Comfortable working across different technical areas.
-   Genuine alignment with our mission around housing.
-   **Able to work in-person in San Francisco, CA**

**What We’re Looking For:**

-   Autonomous vehicle experience, particularly Waymo or Zoox.
-   Multimodal AI.
-   Computer vision.
-   AI evaluation/evals.
-   Research engineering.
-   Highly regulated AI applications.
-   Medical/healthcare AI.
-   Legal AI.
-   Climate-tech startup experience.
-   Early-stage startup engineering.
-   Strong academic background.
-   Evidence of independently identifying and solving difficult technical problems.
-   Experience where incorrect model outputs have serious consequences.
-   Genuine interest in housing, architecture, construction, or policy.

**Nice-to-Haves:**

-   Self-driving/autonomous vehicle background.
-   Highly regulated application-layer AI.
-   Climate tech.
-   Computer vision.
-   Strong academic credentials.
-   Policy/regulatory curiosity.
-   Experience interpreting complex technical documents or diagrams.

## Benefits

**Salary: $160K–$200K Base  
Equity: 0.5%–2%**

**Employment Type: Full-Time  
Visa Sponsorship: None Available**

## Apply

[Apply at JeffreyM Consulting](https://apply.workable.com/jeffreym-consulting/j/618C04C327/apply)

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