{"id":2559579,"url":"https://alion.io/job/clera-founding-ml-research-engineer","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":"Computer Use","optional":false},{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"Function Calling","optional":false},{"name":"Knowledge Distillation","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","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":"Tool Use","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false}],"status":"closed","first_seen_at":"2026-10-14T20:03:52Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-14","last_verified_at":"2026-10-15T03:37:01Z","board_verified":false,"closed_at":"2026-10-15T03:37:01Z","days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"not_scored","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"About the Role\nAs the Founding ML Research Engineer on a consumer AI assistant team, you will lead hands-on research and engineering to improve how the assistant responds, uses tools, and acts safely. Your work will shape product quality while balancing reliability, latency, and model costs.\nWhat You'll Do\nBuild evaluation systems that turn real conversations and user preferences into trustworthy measures for product decisions.\n\nPost-train models using supervised fine-tuning, preference tuning, and distillation, then ship the improvements to production.\n\nDevelop and evaluate model routing that uses smaller models for routine requests and more capable models when needed.\n\nManage the tradeoffs among response quality, latency, and cost across the product.\n\nImprove agent reliability on websites without APIs, including navigation, sign-in, and checkout flows.\n\nTest for adversarial inputs, data exposure, and unintended actions, then build safeguards and evaluations.\n\nApply ML to memory, retrieval, tool selection, and decisions about when to act or ask the user.\n\nReview real conversations, identify opportunities for improvement, and help set research direction as the team grows.\n\nWhat We're Looking For\nAt least 4 years of ML or software engineering experience in an AI lab, AI product company, or equivalent environment.\n\nHands-on experience fine-tuning or post-training large language models and shipping results to production.\n\nExperience designing evaluations, such as LLM judges, human preference data, or traffic replay, that support product decisions.\n\nBackground in one or more areas: red teaming, browser or computer-use agents, model routing, or production agents with tool use and long-running memory.\n\nStrong Python skills and familiarity with the ML stack, plus comfort using TypeScript for product code.\n\nA founding-team mindset, with the ability and interest to take ownership and set research direction.\n\nCompensation & Benefits\nAnnual salary range: $200,000 to $300,000. Visa sponsorship is not available.\nLocation\nFull-time, on-site in San Francisco, California.","description_format":"text","description_chars":2092,"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":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":[],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-14T20:18:09Z"},{"event":"close","at":"2026-10-15T03:37:01Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":null,"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":300000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/clera-founding-ml-research-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/clera-founding-ml-research-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-15T19:38:46Z","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":29769,"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"},{"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"},{"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"},{"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\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fclera-founding-ml-research-engineer"}]}