{"id":183284,"url":"https://alion.io/job/autostep-founding-engineer-ml-forward-deployment","title":"Founding Engineer, ML + Forward Deployment","company":{"id":93629,"name":"Autostep","domain":"autostep.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/autostep","size_band":"11-50","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Work at a Startup","truth_index":null},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":160000,"max_usd":350000,"period":"year","method":"role_country_seniority_unknown","sample_n":4027},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"Electron","optional":false},{"name":"GitHub","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Next.js","optional":false},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"React.js","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false},{"name":"Supabase","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false},{"name":"Vercel","optional":false},{"name":"WhatsApp","optional":false},{"name":"Windows","optional":false},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":true},{"name":"Node JS","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-01T02:12:06Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-13","last_verified_at":"2026-10-17T02:02:17Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":46,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":46},"description":"Mission\nRaise humanity’s starting point with every act of work.\nHumanity should not keep paying the cost of knowledge it has already created.\nAutostep measures outcomes from human and AI work, identifies what companies should change, and helps make that change happen. We have real customer pull. We’re hiring two founding engineers to help turn that pull into exceptional, repeatable customer results.\nYou’ll work across machine learning, full-stack product, forward deployment, and desktop systems. This will be hard. You’ll work directly with mid-market and enterprise customers, ship constantly, and deal with requirements that are messy, incomplete, and sometimes wrong.\nYour job is to put structure around that ambiguity, figure out what should actually be built, and ship it.\nWhat you’ll do\nBuild and improve our data + ML pipeline across accuracy, context, speed, evals, algorithms, agents, and cost.\nShip new projects, product surfaces, UI, experiments, and features constantly. Small projects and improvements should be able to ship daily.\nImprove our existing Mac/Windows desktop app across reliability, performance, deployment, and new capabilities.\nWork directly with customers to clarify messy requirements and environments, question assumptions, define the actual problem, and create as much value as possible.\nTurn lessons from individual customers into repeatable product improvements that make the next deployment better.\nKeep engineering clean as you move quickly: requirements, PRDs, Linear, documentation, tests, decisions, and deadlines should stay current.\nUse AI coding aggressively. We do not care whether you use one agent or twenty. We care whether you understand what shipped and whether it works.\nWhat we’re looking for\nYou have driven real outcomes through things you’ve built or shipped and can show us what changed because of your work.\nStrong Python matters. Our current world includes Python, Jupyter notebooks, TypeScript, React/Next.js, AWS, Supabase/Postgres, Electron, Rust, Vercel, GitHub, and modern AI coding tools.\nWe care about applied ML, algorithms, evals, agents, LLMs, data systems, systems design, desktop software, UI/product taste, and enterprise infrastructure. You do not need every skill today. You need to learn unusually fast.\nYou can talk to customers, explain technical systems clearly, test assumptions, and question bad ones. When something goes wrong, you investigate, communicate clearly, and find a path forward.\nDegrees are optional. Shipped work matters more.\nWhat you get\n$100K in LLM/model/compute credits to help improve the product. Create great customer outcomes with it and we’ll expand the budget.\n\nAdditional model, developer, and startup benefits we’ll show you.\nOccasional access to invite-only founder/startup events.\nSurfing when time and conditions permit.\nA chance to learn deeply across applied ML, AI systems, product, enterprise infrastructure, and some genuinely unusual technical problems.\nWork directly with the founder at a company backed by YC and Neo.\nWork alongside investors who advise us, including Walden Yan (Co-Founder, Cognition, $26B), Erik Goldman (Co-Founder, Vanta, $4B), Charles Mourani (Co-Founder, Cherry, $2B), Kabir Barday (Co-Founder, OneTrust, $4.5B), and Kunal Shah (CEO of WhatsApp; Co-Founder, CRED, $4.5B), alongside other reputable enterprise founders and co-founders.\nSuccess looks like\nCustomers get better outcomes because of what you shipped.\nThey use it. They get exceptional results. They renew and expand.\nDeployments and product quality improve. What you learn from one deployment makes the next deployment faster and better.\nThis is a high-ownership role from day one. We expect high ownership, speed, and measurable outcomes.\nSkills\nPython · Machine Learning · Large Language Models · AI Agents · Evals · AWS · TypeScript · React · Electron · Rust · Jupyter · Software Architecture · Software Security · Windows · macOS\nPhone Screen\nReferences\nIn-Person Technical Interview(s) in San Francisco Preferable / Remote Interview\nAI-Native Technical Build\nCustomer and Forward-Deployment Simulation\nFinal Conversation","description_format":"text","description_chars":4131,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Machine Learning","Custom Software Development"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-01T07:29:06Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":35,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.471,"p_room":0.75,"age_days":45,"expected_fill_days":63,"reasons":["conf:1","win:late"],"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/autostep-founding-engineer-ml-forward-deployment","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/autostep-founding-engineer-ml-forward-deployment.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-17T05:44:33Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":7743,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-18T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":93629},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=93629"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fautostep-founding-engineer-ml-forward-deployment"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fautostep-founding-engineer-ml-forward-deployment"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fautostep-founding-engineer-ml-forward-deployment"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/autostep-founding-engineer-ml-forward-deployment\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fautostep-founding-engineer-ml-forward-deployment"}]}