{"id":21913,"url":"https://alion.io/job/pear-vc-ai-ml-engineer-known","title":"AI / ML Engineer - Known","company":{"id":6218,"name":"Pear VC","domain":"pear.vc","url":"https://alion.io/company/pear-vc","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":true,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":85,"open_postings":94,"ghost_share":0.17,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0.011,"time_to_fill_p50_days":173,"computed_at":"2026-10-22T06:10:10Z"}},"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":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":170000,"max_usd":330000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":477},"experience_years_min":3,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"A/B Testing","optional":false},{"name":"Agentic Workflows","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Embeddings","optional":false},{"name":"Hugging Face","optional":false},{"name":"Human-in-the-Loop","optional":false},{"name":"JAX","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Guardrails","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"TensorFlow","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Evaluation","optional":true},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":true},{"name":"Voice Agents","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2025-10-09T18:57:32Z","employer_posted_date":"2025-10-09","last_verified_at":"2026-10-22T10:37:53Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":377,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":1,"flags":["company_stale"],"days_open":377},"description":"About the Role\nYou’ll be the technical founder driving the machine learning and AI backbone behind Known - an intelligent, compatibility-driven dating platform that blends psychology, data, and human-like conversation. You’ll design and ship the systems that make Known feel magical: personalized matching algorithms, adaptive recommendation loops, and natural voice/LLM-based interactions that help users connect meaningfully.\nYou’ll work closely with the founding team (product, platform, and design) to shape both the data and ML foundations and the user-facing experiences that differentiate Known. This is a hands-on role with ownership across research, prototyping, and production deployment.\nResponsibilities\nDesign and implement multi-stage matching systems (embedding-based retrieval + LLM re-ranking) for compatibility scoring, search, and personalization.\n\nDevelop and maintain ML pipelines for data ingestion, feature generation, model training, evaluation, and inference.\n\nPrototype and productionize agentic workflows for natural-language and voice interactions (e.g., AI-assisted intake interviews, voice matching, or conversation agents).\n\nDeploy and monitor ML models in production with guardrails for performance, fairness, and safety.\n\nRun offline & online experiments (A/B and multivariate) to measure real-world outcomes such as engagement, match success rate, and conversation quality.\n\nCollaborate cross-functionally with platform engineers and product designers to integrate AI seamlessly into the Known user experience.\n\nRequirements\n3+ years in applied ML or data science engineering roles, ideally working on recommendation, search, or personalization systems.\n\nStrong proficiency in Python and modern ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, Hugging Face).\n\nExperience with LLMs, embeddings, and agentic workflows.\n\nUnderstanding of A/B testing and human-in-the-loop system design for model evaluation in production.\n\nFamiliarity with ANN search systems and modern MLOps tools is a plus.\n\nReinforcement learning or preference modeling experience is a strong plus.\n\nYou care about building safe, fair, and human-centered AI experiences.\n\nExample Projects\nDevelop a user matching system based on profile information, onboarding transcripts and engagement behavior.\n\nBuild a dynamic profile enrichment pipeline that integrates behavioral and linguistic features into user representations.\n\nDeploy a lightweight LLM-powered voice agent for user intake and conversational matchmaking.\n\nCreate an evaluation harness combining offline metrics (AUC, NDCG) and online experiments (match acceptance, message rate).\n\nBuild model monitoring and retraining loops informed by live interaction feedback.\n\nWhy This Role\nThis is an opportunity to define the technical DNA of a consumer AI product from day one - to architect and deploy systems that combine data science, human psychology, and generative AI. Your work will directly shape how people connect, communicate, and build relationships in an AI-assisted world.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3030,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":3,"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":["Venture Capital"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2025-10-09T18:57:32Z"},{"event":"reopen","at":"2026-10-14T00:16:54Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":15,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.552,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":377,"expected_fill_days":173,"reasons":["conf:2","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-22T06:10:10Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/pear-vc-ai-ml-engineer-known","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/pear-vc-ai-ml-engineer-known.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-22T13:58:57Z","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":13397,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-23T00:00:00Z"}},"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":6218},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=6218"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fpear-vc-ai-ml-engineer-known"},{"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%2Fpear-vc-ai-ml-engineer-known"},{"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%2Fpear-vc-ai-ml-engineer-known"},{"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/pear-vc-ai-ml-engineer-known\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fpear-vc-ai-ml-engineer-known"}]}