Founding AI/ML Engineer / Startup / $500k+ / NYC

Founding AI/ML Engineer / (LLMs / RAG / Agentic Systems) / NYC / $500k Equity

We’re hiring for a world class team at one of the fastest growing & most innovative next-gen aerospace AI companies in North America. They're building LLMs, RAG & high-performance AI systems to power mission-critical operations in defence & space.

Only the top 0.1% of America's AI Engineers can do this. If you’ve built real mission critical LLM systems that can’t fail - this could be your next move.

The Role

You’ll own & scale a RAG-driven AI system powering critical aerospace operations. Expect to tackle retrieval quality, latency bottlenecks, & eval-driven fine-tuning head-on for the most innovative & exciting real-time systems in Aerospace today. This is full production ownership - from architecture to metrics.

You should have experience with:

• Deploying LLM-based systems at scale (Llama, Mistral, GPT-4, Claude)
• Retrieval optimisation - hybrid search (BM25 vector), reranking, caching
• Evaluation - recall@k, precision@k, groundedness, hallucination metrics
• Fine-tuning (LoRA/QLoRA), RAG architecture, LangChain / LlamaIndex
• Tooling: Hugging Face, Weaviate/Pinecone, FastAPI, PyTorch, Redis, Postgres
• Monitoring inference, eval automation, & continuous improvement loops

Bonus:

• IoT or Hardware integration or real-time systems experience exp.

Ideal background:

• CS or Applied ML degree from a top-tier university
• Proven 0-1 experience in a fast-moving AI startup, or Defence related company
• You’ve shipped reliable GenAI systems under pressure
• Degree in Computer Science from a top-tier university
• Prior experience in high-performance teams (0-1, startups)
• You’ve shipped real systems - not demos

You’ll be expected to:

• Own the LLM pipeline end-to-end – retrieval → evaluation → fine-tuning
• Improve accuracy, grounding, and eval metrics continuously
• Make architecture decisions for scale, reliability & speed
• Collaborate directly with founders & domain experts

Stack:

Python / PyTorch / LangChain / Transformers / FastAPI / Hugging Face / Weaviate / Redis / Postgres / Docker / Kubernetes

Offer:

• Up to $500,000 base salary equity
• Hybrid in NYC
• Tight-knit, high-output team
• High ownership, real impact, flat structure

Interview Process:

1) Technical Deep Dive

2) Technical Assessment or Live Pairing

3) Panel focused on mindset & team fit

Equal Opportunity

We're hiring for an Equal Opportunity Employer.

If you’ve shipped real GenAI systems, thrive under pressure, and want to see your models power live aerospace systems - this is where theory meets orbit.

TL;DR - Senior AI Engineer (NYC, On-site)

• Build & scale production-grade GenAI systems from 0 to 1
• Own and improve RAG pipelines - accuracy and latency matter
• Deep experience with LLMs, LangChain, Hugging Face & real deployments
• Must have shipped working GenAI products, not just prototypes
• Ideal: startup DNA, top-tier CS degree, fast execution mindset
• $500K base equity

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linkedin.com/in/sufyanbashir/