Principal AI Architect / Head of AI / Machine Learning Architect (LLM Expert)

Principal AI Architect / Head of AI / Machine Learning Architect (LLM Expert)
Compensation: $170,000 $220,000 + meaningful equity
Location: San Francisco (Hybrid, 3 days/week in office)
Remote Options: In-office, hybrid
Employment Type: Full-time or Contract

Who Are We?

Were an early-stage, YC-backed startup (Seed) building AI infrastructure to reinvent how private wealth is created and managed. Our AI-native platform democratizes access to alternative investments think venture capital and private equity making them accessible to a new generation of investors.

We're already live with paying customers and significant revenue. Backed by top-tier investors in fintech, our mission is bold, our team is sharp, and our product is moving fast.

What's In It for You?

• Competitive compensation and significant equity upside
• Join a profitable, fast-moving startup with paying customers
• Work on frontier AI problems with practical, real-world application
• Flexible hybrid setup with teammates in SF (3 days/week in office)
• Partner with a highly accomplished founding team (ex-Google, Harvard Law, top VCs)
• Opportunity to architect AI systems from scratch and push LLMs to their limit

What Will You Do?

You'll lead the design and implementation of our generative AI systems to power a next-gen financial advisor platform. Specifically, you'll:

• Build and fine-tune LLMs and multi-modal systems from the ground up
• Architect retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines for real-time financial insights
• Develop autonomous agent frameworks to manage and analyze portfolios
• Apply modern prompting techniques (Tree of Thoughts, Constitutional AI, etc.)
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product, design, and engineering teams to ship production-grade AI features
• Push the limits of what's possible in AI quickly, creatively, and with scientific rigor

What Will You Need?

Must-Haves:

• Experience at a top AI lab or foundation model company (e.g. OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic, Google Brain, Meta FAIR)
• Deep hands-on expertise building and training LLMs not just API calls
• Advanced degree in AI/ML (PhD strongly preferred) from a top-tier university (Stanford, MIT, CMU, etc.)
• Proficiency in building RAG pipelines, autonomous agents, and multi-modal systems
• Strong coding ability in Python, TypeScript, and relevant ML frameworks
• Familiarity with Claude, LLaMA, GPT-4, or similar systems
• Willingness to work startup hours (~996 pace in the near term)

Nice-to-Haves:

• Publications at top-tier AI conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, ACL, etc.)
• Experience with agentic AI protocols and memory architecture
• Prior startup experience or zero-to-one product build
• Domain knowledge in financial systems or investment tech

You are not a fit if:

• You've only used LLMs via APIs (e.g., wrappers around GPT)
• Your ML background is limited to computer vision, robotics, or traditional ML
• You've had multiple short stints or no recent hands-on model development
• You're not open to high-agency, high-velocity startup work

Note:
We do not offer relocation support or visa sponsorship at this time.