{"id":1499204,"url":"https://alion.io/job/unusual-ai-engineer-unusual-ventures","title":"AI Engineer - Unusual Ventures","company":{"id":182227,"name":"Unusual","domain":"unusual.business","url":"https://alion.io/company/unusual-3","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Lever","truth_index":null},"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":158000,"max_usd":297000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":451},"experience_years_min":3,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Function Calling","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Tool Use","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-29T21:45:43Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-29","last_verified_at":"2026-10-19T23:07:45Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":20,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":20},"description":"About Unusual\nUnusual Ventures is an early-stage venture firm that partners with exceptional enterprise software founders from pre-seed through Series B. We work hands-on with founders on go-to-market, customer discovery, and recruiting, with one goal: helping companies find product-market fit.\nWe want AI built into how we source, evaluate, support, and run the firm - not bolted on.\nAbout the Role\nWe're hiring our first AI Engineer to build the internal systems that can help our small team operate with scalable leverage. You'll work across the firm - investing, talent, platform, founder services, finance and operations - finding the highest-leverage problems, then designing, building, and shipping tools people use every day.\nYou'll be our first engineer. That means real ownership and a lot of trust, and it also means you'll set the technical standards, choose the stack, and decide what's worth building.\nThis is a builder role. We care more about solving the underlying problem well than wiring together the newest APIs. You'll have real ownership, direct access to partners and operators, and a short path from idea to production.\nFrom time to time you'll also work directly with portfolio companies: helping founders scope an AI feature, pressure-test their technical approach, or stand up an internal workflow.\nWhat You'll Build (Example projects for your first year):\nTalent intelligence. Agents and pipelines that find, enrich, and rank engineering and GTM talent for our portfolio - working closely with our Talent Partner to turn our recruiting judgment into repeatable systems.\n\nSourcing and research. Tools that surface promising companies and founders early, and context-aware research assistants that draw on our CRM, notes, meeting history, and market data to prep partners before a first meeting.\n\nDiligence support. Workflows that speed up market maps, competitive analysis, customer-call synthesis, and memo drafting - without losing rigor.\n\nFirm knowledge. Making what the firm already knows (thousands of founder and customer conversations, past memos, playbooks) searchable and useful.\n\nOperations automation. Removing manual work from portfolio reporting, LP updates, and back-office processes, in partnership with the CFO/O and VP Finance.\n\nPortfolio support. Reusable AI playbooks and tools that our founder services team can deploy across portfolio companies.\n\nWhat We're Looking For (Required)\n3-6 years of software engineering experience, with at least 1-2 years shipping LLM-powered products or internal tools to production\n\nBS or MS in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience\n\nStrong Python (TypeScript a plus); comfortable across the stack, from data pipelines and APIs to a simple, usable front end\n\nHands-on experience with LLM APIs, retrieval, agents/tool use, and evaluation - and a clear view on when each is the wrong tool\n\nProduct taste: you talk to users, find the real problem, ship something small, and iterate\n\nExperience working with messy real-world data (CRMs, email, calendars, third-party data providers)\n\nClear communicator who can explain tradeoffs to non-technical partners and earn their trust\n\nSelf-directed: comfortable setting priorities with light direction\n\nNice to have\nExperience building internal tools or intelligence products at a VC firm, investment firm, or data-heavy operations team\n\nEarly-stage startup experience, or time as a founder\n\nFamiliarity with venture or enterprise software GTM\n\nExperience with recruiting or people data\n\nPublic work - open-source projects, side projects, writing - that shows how you think and build\n\nHow We Work\nSmall team, high leverage. Your tools will be used daily by the whole firm, and you'll see the impact directly.\n\nBuild, don't just integrate. Buy off the shelf when it's the right call; build when the problem calls for it.\n\nIn person. We work together in the Bay Area office. Being close to the people using your tools is part of the job.\n\nFounders first. Everything we build should ultimately make us more useful to the founders we back.","description_format":"text","description_chars":4124,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":3,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":[],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-30T03:27:05Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":89,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.892,"p_room":1,"age_days":19,"expected_fill_days":82,"reasons":["conf:2","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-19T05:45:15Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/unusual-ai-engineer-unusual-ventures","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/unusual-ai-engineer-unusual-ventures.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-20T00:38:51Z","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":860,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-21T00:00:00Z"}},"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":182227},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=182227"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Funusual-ai-engineer-unusual-ventures"},{"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%2Funusual-ai-engineer-unusual-ventures"},{"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%2Funusual-ai-engineer-unusual-ventures"},{"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/unusual-ai-engineer-unusual-ventures\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Funusual-ai-engineer-unusual-ventures"}]}