What are the responsibilities and job description for the Machine Learning Engineer / Researcher — Hestus (YC) position at David Joseph & Company?
Location: San Mateo, CA (Onsite preferred — open to Bay Area candidates willing to commute)
Compensation: $110,000 – $175,000 base meaningful equity
Visa Sponsorship: None available — US work authorization required
Experience Level: 4 years (or equivalent research-based Master's / PhD)
Employment Type: Full-Time
About Hestus
Hestus is building AI-powered CAD to fundamentally change how hardware is designed and manufactured. Founded by repeat deep-tech entrepreneurs with experience from top YC companies and frontier robotics, Hestus is turning CAD into an intelligent collaborator that understands design intent and autocompletes the work — letting hardware teams move from weeks of repetitive clicking to minutes of high-leverage engineering. YC-backed, 5–10 person team based in San Mateo.
About The Role
This is the first senior ML and research hire at Hestus. You will own the full lifecycle of ML systems powering the AI-driven CAD product — moving between deep research and hands-on engineering, scoping problems with the founders, designing and training novel models, and shipping them into robust production code. Over time you will have the opportunity to define the roadmap for CAD-focused ML research, mentor future hires, and grow into a Staff/Principal IC or early engineering leader.
What You'll Own
Compensation: $110,000 – $175,000 base meaningful equity
Visa Sponsorship: None available — US work authorization required
Experience Level: 4 years (or equivalent research-based Master's / PhD)
Employment Type: Full-Time
About Hestus
Hestus is building AI-powered CAD to fundamentally change how hardware is designed and manufactured. Founded by repeat deep-tech entrepreneurs with experience from top YC companies and frontier robotics, Hestus is turning CAD into an intelligent collaborator that understands design intent and autocompletes the work — letting hardware teams move from weeks of repetitive clicking to minutes of high-leverage engineering. YC-backed, 5–10 person team based in San Mateo.
About The Role
This is the first senior ML and research hire at Hestus. You will own the full lifecycle of ML systems powering the AI-driven CAD product — moving between deep research and hands-on engineering, scoping problems with the founders, designing and training novel models, and shipping them into robust production code. Over time you will have the opportunity to define the roadmap for CAD-focused ML research, mentor future hires, and grow into a Staff/Principal IC or early engineering leader.
What You'll Own
- Design, train, and iterate on custom deep learning models that understand CAD workflows and predict high-quality next-step suggestions
- Build and maintain robust Python training and evaluation pipelines — data preprocessing, experimentation, and offline/online metrics
- Architect model serving and backend components so features are fast, reliable, and easy to integrate into CAD environments
- Work closely with the founder and early customers (mechanical and hardware engineers) to understand real-world workflows and translate them into ML formulations
- Own the full lifecycle of ML features — from research and prototyping through productionization, deployment, and monitoring
- Collaborate with the broader engineering team on core product and infrastructure work — backend, APIs, data models, performance
- Establish best practices for experimentation, logging, and model comparison
- Stay current on relevant ML research (sequence models, geometric deep learning, representation learning) and apply pragmatically
- 4 years of hands-on ML experience, or equivalent research-based Master's or PhD
- Proven track record of training and improving deep models — not just calling hosted APIs
- Expert with PyTorch (preferred), TensorFlow, or JAX — comfortable implementing and modifying custom architectures, loss functions, and training loops
- Strong production-ready Python — clean, well-structured, with tests, documentation, and thoughtful abstractions
- End-to-end ownership experience — data to deployment, training pipelines, hyperparameter tuning, shipping models into real products
- Ability to work closely with founders and translate open-ended product requirements into concrete ML formulations
- Able to commute to San Mateo for onsite or hybrid work
- US work authorization required — no sponsorship available
- Experience with geometry, graphics, CAD, 3D representations, or robotics
- Familiarity with cloud ML platforms (AWS/GCP) and backend frameworks (FastAPI, Flask, Django)
- Published research or meaningful open-source contributions demonstrating novel technical work
- Competitive salary and meaningful equity
- Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
- Catered team lunch in the San Mateo office
- Unlimited / flexible time off
- High-ownership role on a small, senior founding team
- Short online survey (:15 minutes)
- Initial call (30–45 minutes) with founders
- Take-home coding and ML exercise (target :8 hours)
- Onsite or virtual technical interviews with CEO, CTO, and engineering team — ML system design, research thinking, production engineering
- Offer
- Onsite preferred in San Mateo — Bay Area candidates willing to commute considered
- US work authorization required — no visa sponsorship or relocation assistance available
Salary : $110,000 - $175,000