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

*All our new jobs are posted here 1st:

linkedin.com/in/sufyanbashir/