Founding AI Engineer

About Lif3away

Lif3away is building a next-generation AI-enabled platform focused on enabling seamless mid- to long-term living across borders. We operate at the intersection of technology, trust, and global mobility, addressing a category that is large, fragmented, and underserved.

This is not a standard AI role.

We are offering a founding-level opportunity to join the company at a critical early stage and help shape the intelligence layer of a global product.

Compensation during the pre-funding stage is equity-based, with salary commencing post-Seed.

The Role

We are looking for a Founding AI Engineer to join our core engineering team.

You will work closely with the CTO and CEO to design and implement intelligent systems that support search, decisioning, automation, and user workflows across the platform. Early work will focus on pragmatic, production-ready solutions, with increasing sophistication as real usage data becomes available.

This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy building real systems, not research projects, and who understand how AI products evolve from simple logic into scalable intelligence.

Key Responsibilities

* Design and implement AI-driven components that support core product workflows.

* Build and iterate on search, ranking, and decision logic using a mix of rules, heuristics, and machine learning.

* Integrate AI functionality into real user-facing flows in collaboration with full-stack engineers.

* Apply LLMs and modern ML techniques where they add clear value.

* Define data structures and feedback loops to enable continuous improvement.

* Ensure solutions are reliable, explainable, and suitable for trust-sensitive use cases.

* Contribute to the long-term AI and data strategy of the platform.

What we're looking for

* 4–8+ years of experience in AI, ML, or applied data engineering.

* Strong proficiency in Python and modern ML tooling.

* Hands-on experience with LLMs, embeddings, ranking, or recommendation systems.

* Ability to combine deterministic logic with probabilistic models.

* Product-oriented mindset — you think in terms of user impact, not just models.

* Comfortable operating in early-stage, fast-moving environments.

* Strong communication and collaboration skills.

Nice to have

* Experience with search, matching, or decision systems.

* Familiarity with LLM orchestration frameworks or vector databases.

* Experience shipping AI features used by real customers.

* Background in SaaS, marketplaces, fintech, or trust-critical systems.

* Prior startup or founding-team experience.

Compensation & Structure

* Equity-only during pre-funding phase (founding-level allocation).

* Salary + continued equity post-Seed.

* Flexible, remote-friendly setup.

* Clear growth path as the AI function expands.

Why join Lif3away?

* Join at the foundation of a high-impact, global platform.

* Help shape the intelligence layer of a real, revenue-generating product.

* Work directly with an experienced CTO and the founder.

* Gain meaningful early equity ahead of a planned Seed round.

* Build systems that matter in real-world, high-stakes contexts.