{"id":68087,"url":"https://alion.io/job/matroid-vlm-vfm-forward-deployed-engineer","title":"VLM & VFM Forward Deployed Engineer","company":{"id":37106,"name":"Matroid","domain":"matroid.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/matroid","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Breezy","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":70,"open_postings":12,"ghost_share":0.5,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"}},"role":"Solutions","role_family":"Solutions","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Palo Alto, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":137000,"max_usd":300000,"period":"year","method":"role_country_seniority_unknown","sample_n":4100},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Anomaly Detection","optional":false},{"name":"Computer Vision","optional":false},{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"Hugging Face","optional":false},{"name":"JAX","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Multimodal AI","optional":false},{"name":"NumPy","optional":false},{"name":"OpenCV","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"Ray","optional":false},{"name":"TensorFlow","optional":false},{"name":"VLM","optional":false},{"name":"Agentic Workflows","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-14T17:31:33Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-14","last_verified_at":"2026-10-17T12:30:13Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":63,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":["company_stale"],"days_open":63},"description":"About Matroid\nMatroid is a full-service computer vision company that has developed an end-to-end platform allowing enterprise customers to rapidly train and deploy automated visual inspection on imagery, including EO, IR, X-Ray, CT, OCT, and others.\nFounded in 2016 by a Stanford professor, Matroid serves a broad and rapidly growing customer base across manufacturing, automotive, logistics, aerospace, data center infrastructure, and security.\nWe’re looking for a Vision Language Model (VLM) & Visual Foundation Model (VFM) Forward Deployed Engineer to operate at the forefront of visual and multi-modal intelligence deployment in industry, building best-in-class AI systems that leverage vision-centric and vision-language models to solve a broad range of challenging real-world use cases, such as defect inspection, anomaly detection, assembly verification, process and safety monitoring, multi-modal understanding, retrieval, and reasoning over large collections of images, videos, operational data.\nYou’ll be working at our new office in downtown Palo Alto, just a five-minute walk from the Caltrain station and a nine-minute walk from Stanford University.\nWhat you’ll be doing\nTrain and deploy state-of-the-art vision-centric and vision-language models across a broad range of industrial domains, including manufacturing, automotive, logistics, aerospace, data center infrastructure, security, and more.\nDeploy end-to-end CV systems across a range of environments (cloud, edge, hybrid).\nDefine benchmarks and perform quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the AI systems, including accuracy, reliability, latency, throughput, and/or robustness, and then iterate to meet production requirements.\nDesign and develop industrial-grade imaging systems for high-quality, consistent data collection.\nIntegrate Matroid into customer workflows and systems, such as manufacturing execution systems, PLCs, SCADA systems, quality management systems, safety alert systems, and video management systems, with common industrial protocols.\nAct as the technical expert, advising on all matters from technical scoping of engagements to model adaptation, deployment architecture, evaluation, integration, and customer enablement.\nEmpower customers with AI by designing and leading product training sessions, technical workshops, and deployment playbooks.\nHow you’ll be doing it\nYou will be a computer vision and multi-modal AI guru, intelligently translating real-world business problems into performant computer vision and/or vision language solutions.\nYou will be a SOTA model adapter, selecting, fine-tuning, prompting, evaluating, and orchestrating the right models for the task at hand.\nYou will be a product expert, deeply understanding Matroid’s platform and applying the right features, models, workflows, and integrations to solve customer problems.\nYou will be a customer advocate, understanding customers’ operational requirements and relaying feedback to the broader Matroid team to drive customer-centric development.\nYou will be an AI orchestrator, integrating robust and efficient deep learning systems with third-party systems to deliver real-world impact.\nYou will operate in a collaborative yet highly autonomous environment that isn’t bogged down by unnecessary meetings or project management overhead.\nYou will learn a lot along the way, diving into new technologies and the world of computer vision and multi-modal AI, both on your own and during frequent company tech talks.\nWhat you bring to the table\nBachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or another technical field.\nExperience working with modern visual recognition models, including object detection, segmentation, tracking, action recognition, anomaly detection, and/or vision-language models for multi-modal understanding, reasoning, and retrieval.\nStrong Python coding skills, with the ability to build reliable systems that interact with various models, APIs, databases, customer infrastructure, and production workflows.\nExperience with popular machine learning and computer vision frameworks and tools, such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, Hugging Face, Numpy, OpenCV, or similar technologies.\nStrong ability to evaluate AI systems rigorously, including designing benchmarks, analyzing failure modes, and improving model performance through data, prompts, architecture, or workflow design.\nSolid oral, written, presentation, collaboration, and interpersonal communication skills.\nAdept at communicating with both technical and commercial audiences.\nBonus points if...\nGraduate degree with a concentration in computer vision, artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, robotics, or related fields.\nPrevious work experience in forward-deployed engineering, field engineering, professional services, consulting, solutions engineering, or another customer-facing technical role.\nExperience deploying AI systems in industrial, manufacturing, aerospace, logistics, security, or other operational environments.\nExperience with complex computer vision and vision language tasks, like spatial-temporal reasoning, open-world visual recognition, 3D visual understanding/reconstruction, or agentic workflows.\nExperience with high-growth technology startups.\nWhat we offer in return\nCompetitive pay and equity.\nThe chance to constantly work on stimulating intellectual challenges.\nGym membership reimbursement.\nFree lunch, healthy drinks, and snacks every day.\nMedical, dental, and vision insurance with 100% paid premiums.\nA flexible schedule that leaves time for all of your other interests.\nA budget for whatever hardware or software will make you most effective.\nResources to learn about the cutting edge of software engineering, computer vision, VLMs, LLMs, and multi-modal AI.\nYou’ll be working at our new office in downtown Palo Alto, just a five-minute walk from the Caltrain station.\nMatroid is committed to creating a diverse work environment and is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, non-disqualifying physical or mental disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other basis covered by appropriate law.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6363,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Flexible schedule","Gym membership","Vision insurance"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Machine Learning","Computer Vision","Industrial AI"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-08-14T17:31:33Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 2","filings_12m":2,"filings_prev_12m":0,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":152500,"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":0}],"liveness":{"score":9,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.245,"p_room":0.36,"age_days":63,"expected_fill_days":33,"reasons":["conf:3","stale_co","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/matroid-vlm-vfm-forward-deployed-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/matroid-vlm-vfm-forward-deployed-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-17T14:21:53Z","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":19333,"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":37106},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=37106"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fmatroid-vlm-vfm-forward-deployed-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%2Fmatroid-vlm-vfm-forward-deployed-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%2Fmatroid-vlm-vfm-forward-deployed-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/matroid-vlm-vfm-forward-deployed-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fmatroid-vlm-vfm-forward-deployed-engineer"}]}