Founding Machine Learning Engineer - Stealth Robotics Startup

PROBLEM:

Imagine a world in which people build websites or products without Google Analytics, Mixpanel, or Datadog. That would be hard. Yet, for engineers working on modern robotics systems (such as self-driving cars or drones), that’s an analogous reality. These engineers don’t have great tools or instrumentation to properly make sense of the data they capture, or hack together solutions in-house, or struggle to make informed decisions about their robots when things aren’t working correctly (which is often the case as the field of Robotics is still nascent).

OPPORTUNITY:

BCG forecasts that the global robotics market will climb from $25 billion in 2021 to upwards of $260 billion by 2030. McKinsey forecasts that the global shared autonomous-driving market alone will be roughly $1.6 trillion by 2030. By any measure—the robotics industry is going to be huge—with the majority of that growth coming in the next 5-10 years. But what's clear is that the industry doesn’t have the tools to facilitate that growth.

SOLUTION:

We're building a platform to search, understand, and monitor the vast amounts of data produced by autonomous systems. Our platform ingests data from a wide range of devices (such as cameras, lidars, radars, batteries, motors, and more), and then allows engineers to analyze and transform it into actionable insights. It’s AI. It's robotics. It’s autonomous systems. It’s the future. And it’s going to be huge. Join us!

WHO WE ARE:

We are a small but mighty (and growing) group with a mission to help the robotics industry to build smarter/safer robots and bring them to market faster. Our founding team is made up of experts in robotics, engineering, machine learning, computer vision and more. In past lives—we were founding engineers on the Amazon Prime Air team, led autonomy and simulation initiatives at Amazon Robotics, and implemented machine learning solutions from AWS into numerous Fortune 500 companies. We also count the Paul Allen Institute for AI as a cofounder, one of the world’s leading A.I. research institutions.

IN THIS ROLE YOU WILL Build a machine learning platform for high-resolution, multi-modal sensor data.

TYPICAL QUALIFICATIONS:

• 2+ YOE, ideally ex-growth startup or ex-FAANG
• Experience designing and developing ML algorithms
• Expertise in Python and ML frameworks such as Pytorch and Tensorflow
• Experience with a range of machine learning approaches (regression, classification, clustering, time-series, etc.)
• Experience with computer vision tasks (object detection, segmentation, scene understanding, tracking etc.) and frameworks such as OpenCV
• Strong understanding of deep learning model architectures such as convolutional/recurrent neural networks and transformers
• Knowledge of the state-of-the-art in deep learning and a passion for reading and implementing papers
• Experience tuning, validating, optimizing, visualizing, and debugging models
• Experience with Docker and containerization technologies
• Experience with machine learning services such as AWS SageMaker is a plus
• Experience with large language models and natural language technologies is a plus
• Experience with robotics data formats such as ROS and PX4 is a plus
• Publications in machine learning, computer vision or robotics conferences is a plus
• BS/MS in Computer Science or equivalent industry experience

BENEFITS AND PERKS:

We’re a stealth startup, being built by some of the best in the world. But it is early days and we are just getting started. While we can’t offer numerous perks just yet (although we do have a game room!), we do have several unique benefits that you can’t really get anywhere else:

• Personal impact — The opportunity to build something from the ground up, define a new product, and lead a team over time.
• “Founding” title, one of the first five employees — You will be one of our first hires. For the rest of our days, no matter how many thousands of people join after you, you will always have that honor and distinction. Also happens to look great on a resume, too.
• Early stage equity — Early stage risk comes with early stage equity for you. And none of us (not our founders, nor the Allen Institute for AI) would be here if we didn’t think that our company will create tremendous shareholder value over time.
• Access to unique learning opportunities — With the Allen Institute for AI as a cofounder, our team gets access to numerous talks by leading AI researchers/paper authors, access to knowledge sharing amongst the community of hundreds of engineers that work for ai2incubator.com companies, and much more.
• Six-figure salary — We are a pre-seed startup and need to be modest until we raise a big round. We do pay a meaningful salary, but it will probably be less than you would make at FAANG. That said, there’s nothing like the energy and excitement of a startup and the unique benefits and learning opportunities of taking an early risk that we mentioned above. And of course, as we raise more money, you will quickly get raises that will bring you closer to market.
• Visa support, if needed

ABOUT AI2:

The AI2 Incubator is an initiative of the Allen Institute for A.I.-a world-leading research institute with over 200+ A.I. PhDs, researchers, engineers, and support staff. Our Incubator helps entrepreneurs come up with ideas, find co-founders, engage pilot customers, refine their product, work with research paper authors to incorporate the latest A.I. techniques into their technology, and raise millions of dollars in venture funding. We are backed by some of the best investors and executives in the world including Madrona Venture Group, Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, and Two Sigma Ventures-along with Jeff Dean (Google Senior Fellow), Jeff Wilke (CEO Amazon Worldwide Consumer), Adam Selipsky (CEO Tableau Software), Sujal Patel (Founder of Isilon), Carol Reiley (co-founder of Drive.ai), Laura Butler (Microsoft Technical Fellow), Leigh McMillan (CEO of Whitepages), Charlie Bell (SVP of Amazon Web Services), Chris Re (Stanford Professor & Founder of Lattice), and more.