Who is Recruiting from Scratch :
Recruiting from Scratch is a talent firm that focuses on placing the best candidate for our clients.
Title: Machine Learning Research Engineer
Location: San Francisco, CA
Company Stage of Funding: Series B
Office Type: Onsite, 5 Days a Week
Salary: $250,000 - $300,000 + Equity
Company Description
Our client is a fast-growing, venture-backed startup that's transforming how enterprises deliver exceptional customer support through advanced AI agents. With $100M in funding and partnerships with some of the most recognized brands in tech, this company is at the forefront of conversational AI innovation. Backed by top-tier investors and founded by serial entrepreneurs, the team is building powerful, autonomous systems that handle complex support tasks with high accuracy and human-like responsiveness.
Join a team of ambitious builders and researchers redefining how AI can serve real business needs at scale.
What You Will Do
As the first dedicated Machine Learning Research Engineer, you will lead efforts to fine-tune and deploy large language models that sit at the heart of our client's enterprise AI platform. You'll be responsible for:
- Designing and conducting experiments to improve model performance across a variety of use cases.
- Fine-tuning open and closed source LLMs to enhance their accuracy, contextual understanding, and instruction following.
- Evaluating and deploying models in production, monitoring their behavior, and continuously iterating for better outcomes.
- Working closely with product and engineering teams to understand customer needs and integrate ML solutions accordingly.
- Helping define the roadmap for model improvement and R&D.
- Operating autonomously and with full ownership of the ML stack.
Ideal Candidate Background
We're looking for someone who thrives in an early-stage, high-impact environment and is excited by both research and implementation. Ideal candidates will have:
- 4+ years of experience in ML/AI engineering or applied research.
- Proven success taking ML projects from concept to production.
- Experience fine-tuning LLMs (e.g., GPT, LLaMA, Claude, Mistral).
- Familiarity with a wide variety of model architectures, including both open and closed source.
- A background as a machine learning engineer, not a generalist software engineer or data scientist.
- A CS degree from a top-tier university.
- Experience working at a top tech or AI-first company (e.g., Meta, Google, Nuro).
- Strong independence, ability to operate without a research team.
- Excitement for in-person collaboration in a fast-paced SF-based environment.
Preferred Qualifications
- Publications or open-source contributions demonstrating thought leadership in ML/AI.
- Experience with reinforcement learning or agentic behavior modeling.
- Familiarity with vector databases, embeddings, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
- Startup experience or demonstrated ability to thrive in high-autonomy roles.
Compensation and Benefits
- Base Salary: $250,000 - $300,000
- Equity: Competitive and meaningful
- Visa Sponsorship: Available for qualified candidates
- Benefits: Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, generous PTO, in-office perks, and the opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds in applied AI.