Machine Learning Engineer

What we do
Vana is creating a decentralized system for everyone to own, use, and share their digital likeness, and to unlock its full potential through immersive experiences. We allow users to own their data and what makes them unique, including the AI models that understand how they look, speak and think. You can try out https://portrait.vana.com/ to get a sense of the early experience. We are a small team that got started out of MIT and have raised $20M from top VCs.
For more information, see our hiring FAQ. 
The problem
Generative AI is breaking all the rules - blurring the lines between creator and consumer, between data and output, between code and art. Amidst this revolution is something truly beautiful: you. At Vana, we’re a community working together to harness the power of AI and data, to unleash its creative potential to explore our digital selves.
By now, each of us has a digital fingerprint. A web of interlinked data is woven from every key tapped, step tracked, or photo taken in our lifetime. Combining this fingerprint with generative AI give us the power to scale ourselves exponentially, augmenting ourselves with amazing out of this world abilities.
About the Role:
Engineering is a full-stack team that builds all Vana products (both applications and infrastructure) and interfaces with end users, external developers.
Current projects they might be working on: Portrait App, an app that generates stylized portraits using a user’s likeness. Vana Home, an app that allows users to manage and monitor their likeness, connect and share with others, and train new models.
Future roadmap/vision: At Vana, users come to create, share, monitor, and manage AI models trained on their Digital Self. Identity has taken on new meaning in the fast paced world of Generative AI. Vana is the entry point for Users to explore what their AI likeness is capable of, as everything from video games to social media to business becomes transformed and personalized to a degree we’ve never seen. Our AI needs to be cutting edge, and our Users need to know that we have their back every step of the way. 

You Will: (Responsibilities)

• Building the pipeline to execute ML inference requests and model tuning. 
• Benchmarking and optimizing existing ML infrastructure for both performance, cost, and quality of output.
• Investigating emergent generative AI technologies for inclusion in the Platform.
• Building text, image, and video input and output processes to increase the quality and safety of the ML infrastructure.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or related field, or 4+ years of professional experience in ML/AI.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure.
• Python
• Experience with shared codebases, gitflow, or similar shared repository technology.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Can display code contributions in production
• M.S. or Higher in Computer Science or Related Field
• Experience with cloud filesystems and both nosql and relational databases
• Experience in a startup environment
• Experience working on a distributed team

What we offer
We are building a foundational piece of the user-owned internet and would love for you to be a part of our team. We are a diverse group of driven, smart, and ambitious individuals, constantly challenging each other to grow, learn and iterate faster. We are experts across our fields and experienced entrepreneurs looking to scale our success in something deeply mission-driven.
For more information, see our Vana Hiring FAQ [External]. 
At Vana, we are big on collaboration and supporting each other to learn, grow, and excel in our individual pursuits. In addition to joining the Vana family, the successful candidate will receive: 
- A competitive base salary- A generous benefits package including health insurance, dental and vision - Flexible work schedule- Unlimited PTO