Principal Software Engineer, Applied AI

CHAOS Industries is redefining modern defense with omniscient systems purpose-built for today’s realities. Designed and built by top U.S. military veterans and Silicon Valley innovators, CHAOS Industries’ products are powered by Coherent Distributed Networks (CDN™), empowering warfighters, commercial air operators, and border protection teams to act faster, adapt rapidly, and stay ahead of evolving threats. In a world where technological threats move at unprecedented speed, CHAOS Industries delivers advanced sensing and detection solutions that give the ultimate advantage: time.

CHAOS Industries was founded in 2022 and has raised $1B in total funding from leading investors including 8VC, Accel, and NEA. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and London. For more information, please visit www.chaosinc.com.

Role Overview:

Build AI for systems that detect and protect against next-generation arial threats in near real-time. Your models ship to the field in weeks not months, protecting critical infrastructure and assets while others are still tuning hyperparameters or reading papers. Join our team of world-class engineers at CHAOS Inc. who move fast in a high-trust environment where independence and impact aren't buzzwords. 

• We are seeking a highly motivated and mission-oriented Principal Software Engineer, Applied AI to drive the development, integration, and deployment of AI/ML-powered capabilities across CHAOS’ product lines.  
• This individual will work in a high velocity environment with a very high-caliber team of researchers and engineers to ensure advanced AI research translates into tangible, real-world testable shippable software especially in defense applications.  
• You must bring a strong record of past successes of delivering AI powered solutions including but not limited to creative use of AI and Machine Learning technologies in solving actual business problems.  
• Any exposure to digital signal processing in a highly regulated or mission-driven sector like aerospace, defense, or critical infrastructure is a big plus.  
• Must have excellent communication and be comfortable in presenting your ideas to various stakeholders including customers.  
• The candidate should be comfortable working with distributed teams, partners, customers and other stakeholders to learn the requirements, come up with a proposal for a solution, rapidly develop prototypes and finally perhaps implement and roll them out eventually to production with low oversight. People who never say, “not my problem”. 

Responsibilities:

• Learn: Quickly come up to speed browsing existing code and documentation. Be motivated to learn unfamiliar subjects and drive your own learning needs. Continuously keep up with industry trends. 
• Productization: Ensure our AI models are robust, interpretable, testable, and performant under real-world conditions—especially in adversarial, low-power, GPS-Denied and/or edge-deployed environments. You must have an incredible eye to detail and be able to make tradeoffs keeping business interests in mind. 
• On-site 2-3 days a week in San Francisco, CA 

Minimum Requirements:

• BS or MS or PhD in Comp Sc/ Electrical/ Electronic Engineering or equivalent professional experience 
• 8 - 15 years of hands-on experience covering Data Science, data engineering, setting up model building and inferencing pipelines and using data science to solve real business and other problems.  
• Experience leading small teams of junior engineers or mentoring them is required 

Preferred Requirements:

• Experience building agents using contemporary frameworks (e.g. Langchain etc.) 
• Experience with libraries like PyTorch, TensorFlow/TensorRT, streaming image classification or arbitrary or targeted shape detection in point clouds (Radar / Lidar) are going to be highly valuable 
• Any experience with Analog or Digital RF signal processing will make you standout (although not required) 
• Committer to one or more open-source projects (not a requirement) 

Why CHAOS?

• Health Benefits: Medical, dental, and vision benefits 100% paid for by the company
• Additional benefits: 401k ( 50% company match up to 6% of pay), FSA, HSA, life insurance, and more
• Our Perks: Free daily lunch, ‘No meeting Fridays’, unlimited PTO, casual dress code
• Compensation Components: Competitive base salaries, generous pre-IPO stock option grants, relocation assistance, and (coming soon!) annual bonuses
• Team Growth: 200 employees and counting across 5 global offices

The stated compensation range reflects only the targeted base compensation range and excludes additional earnings such as bonus, equity, and benefits. If your compensation requirements fall outside of the range, we still encourage you to apply. The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations.

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