{"id":2585168,"url":"https://alion.io/job/clera-founding-ml-research-engineer-2","title":"Founding ML Research Engineer","company":{"id":2706,"name":"Clera","domain":"getclera.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/clera","size_band":"11-50","is_staffing_agency":true,"employer_type":"agency","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":80,"open_postings":30,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":6,"computed_at":"2026-10-15T05:46:00Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"middle","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":{"min":200000,"max":300000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":300000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":4,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Computer Use","optional":false},{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"Knowledge Distillation","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Evaluation","optional":false},{"name":"Model Distillation","optional":false},{"name":"Post-training","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Red Teaming","optional":false},{"name":"SFT","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-15T02:46:25Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-15","last_verified_at":"2026-10-15T22:42:30Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"About the Role\nJoin the founding team at a Y Combinator-backed AI assistant startup to build the models and systems behind a useful, reliable AI agent. You will lead hands-on research and engineering that improves answer quality while managing latency, cost, and safety, and ship improvements to users regularly.\nWhat You'll Do\nBuild evaluation harnesses using model judges, human preference data, and regression tests to guide release decisions.\n\nPost-train models through supervised fine-tuning, preference tuning, and distillation, then ship the results to production.\n\nDevelop model routing that balances answer quality, latency, and cost across smaller and frontier models.\n\nImprove agent performance on websites without APIs, including navigation, sign-in, and checkout, with appropriate escalation when needed.\n\nIdentify and address prompt injection, data leakage, and other risks through adversarial testing and evaluations.\n\nAdvance memory, retrieval, tool selection, and decisions about when the agent should act or ask for help.\n\nReview real conversations and turn findings into evaluation and model improvements.\n\nWhat We're Looking For\nAt least 4 years of ML or software engineering experience at an AI lab, AI product company, or similar organization.\n\nHands-on experience fine-tuning or post-training LLMs and deploying the results to production.\n\nExperience designing evaluations that teams have used to make product release decisions.\n\nBackground in at least one area: LLM red teaming, browser or computer-use agents, model routing, or production agents with tools and persistent memory.\n\nStrong Python skills and experience with ML training and evaluation tools, plus TypeScript experience in a product codebase.\n\nA hands-on, founding-team approach, with interest in setting technical direction and helping grow the team.\n\nCompensation & Benefits\nSalary range: $200,000 to $300,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.\nLocation\nOn-site in San Francisco, California, United States.","description_format":"text","description_chars":2010,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":4,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":[],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-15T03:37:01Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":38,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.379,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":6,"reasons":["conf:2","agency","stale_co","velocity","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-15T05:46:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":300000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/clera-founding-ml-research-engineer-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/clera-founding-ml-research-engineer-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-15T23:31:37Z","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":35630,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-16T00:00:00Z"}},"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":2706},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=2706"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fclera-founding-ml-research-engineer-2"},{"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%2Fclera-founding-ml-research-engineer-2"},{"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%2Fclera-founding-ml-research-engineer-2"},{"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/clera-founding-ml-research-engineer-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fclera-founding-ml-research-engineer-2"}]}