{"id":66903,"url":"https://alion.io/job/kos-founding-ai-engineer","title":"Founding AI Engineer","company":{"id":22084,"name":"KOS","domain":"kos.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/kos","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":5,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"junior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","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":170000,"max":250000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":250000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":2,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"Computer Use","optional":false},{"name":"Computer Vision","optional":false},{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"Function Calling","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Evaluation","optional":false},{"name":"OpenAI","optional":false},{"name":"Tool Use","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-05-07T14:39:20Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-05-07","last_verified_at":"2026-10-17T22:06:22Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":163,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":1,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":162},"description":"Aboutkos.ai\nTrillions of dollars are flowing into datacenters, defense, energy, and manufacturing. The finance teams processing that capital can't keep up. 800-page invoices, thousand-page contracts, landing every few weeks, often on weekends. The world can't hire specialized accountants fast enough.\nKos is the world's first virtual finance employee for america’s industrial revival. We're processing invoices for some of the fastest-growing infrastructure and defense companies in America. Backed by $12M from 8VC, XYZ, and MVP with industry-leaders as shareholders (Keith Taylor [ex-CFO Equinix], Heather Paduck [CFO STACK], Matt DeNezza [ex-CFO Crusoe], Sachin Katti [Industrial Compute OpenAI]).\nMedia: The Information covering our launch\n\nThe Role\nYou'll own the agent loop, the model orchestration, and the eval infrastructure. Kos is processing billions of dollars of customer work. Your systems are what keep that right. You'll own how that system gets built and how it gets better. Your work lands in production at some of the largest and fastest-growing infrastructure and defense companies in America.\nWhat you'll do:\nOwn the agent runtime: computer use, tool orchestration, and memory loop that lets Kos learn a workflow from customer demos\n\nDesign the ensemble routing layer that picks the right model per step and keeps Kos.ai provider-agnostic\n\nBuild the evaluation harness that catches regressions on recorded customer workflows before they reach production\n\nTake frontier agent capabilities from paper to production, with equal attention to what the research says and what runs reliably every day\n\nPartner with the applied controller team so practitioner-caught errors turn into prompt, model, and routing improvements\n\nSet the hiring bar and culture for Kos.ai\n\nYou\nHave strong fundamentals: Bachelors / Masters / PhD in CS/EE from top-tier universities, 2+ years of experience\n\nHave shipped an agentic system, computer-use agent, or LLM-powered feature into production. Or you have an equivalent research track record.\n\nWorked on modern LLM orchestration, tool use, eval design for open-ended tasks, and the tradeoffs between fine-tuning, prompting, and retrieval are second nature to you\n\nCan take a problem from \"interesting paper\" to \"runs reliably every day for paying customers\" without being told how to scope it\n\nTrack agent and LLM research closely. Useful ideas turn into production experiments in your hands quickly.\n\nCare as much about the eval harness as the model weights.\n\nBenefits\nMedical, dental, vision for you and your dependents (little/no premiums, the absolute best we qualify for)\n\n401(k)\n\nVisa sponsorship\n\nTeam\nTanuj and Mani met at Stanford as graduate researchers under Sachin Katti.\nTanuj spent his career in and around the operators Kos serves: IT, datacenters, industrials, and hardware. He previously founded Spot AI, a computer vision company which scaled to over 1,000 enterprise customers. Mani's an International Olympiad medalist, earned his Engineering PhD at Stanford, & published leading research at Microsoft Research. He then built product within Microsoft Azure's Strategic Missions and Technologies group.\nWe built Kos because the finance and operations teams behind America's re-industrialization are talented, overwhelmed, and can't hire their way out. Every CFO we spoke to described the same problem: 800-page pay apps, thousand-page contracts, work piling up on weekends, and a talent pool for inventory, utilities, capex, and construction accounting that's simply too small to meet the moment. The back office of the buildout is the bottleneck, and it's the one nobody's building for. They deserve a partner that can keep pace with their ambition.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3716,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":2,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["AI Agents","Construction Management Software"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-05-07T14:39:20Z"},{"event":"close","at":"2026-08-20T18:39:27Z"},{"event":"reopen","at":"2026-08-29T22:06:55Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 1","filings_12m":1,"filings_prev_12m":0,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":252500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":1}],"liveness":{"score":5,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.162,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":162,"expected_fill_days":19,"reasons":["conf:3","win:tail","crowd:junior"],"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":250000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/kos-founding-ai-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/kos-founding-ai-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-17T22:46:44Z","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":927,"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":22084},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=22084"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fkos-founding-ai-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%2Fkos-founding-ai-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%2Fkos-founding-ai-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/kos-founding-ai-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fkos-founding-ai-engineer"}]}