Machine Learning Engineer
First seen by Alion on Sep 25, 2026.
What actually helps people heal, grow, and live well? The honest answer is that nobody fully knows. The paths are many: medicine, therapy, meditation, movement, spiritual practice, community. Each holds real wisdom, but which one will work for you depends on everything that makes you you, and no research has ever been able to account for that. So people spend years guessing.
For the first time, machine learning makes it possible to bring these worlds together: the rigour of science and the richness of real life. Stories, emotions, and lived experience used to be dismissed as data because no one could work with them at scale. Now we can.
Vinyamo is building the platform that learns from both, across every modality, without loyalty to any single one, to create a comprehensive model of human experience. One that can meet anyone, wherever they are, on whatever path they walk, and show them their own fastest route to a life that fits.
Imagine a world where no one has to guess their way to a better life. Where the wisdom of millions of lived experiences is finally connected and available to anyone navigating their own. That's what we're here to build.
Why this opportunity is rare
Vinyamo is funded by its founder, a mission-driven entrepreneur with a proven track record, with the runway to see this through and build it well, free of the clock a funding round puts on a company. This allows for long-term vision, focus, freedom, and innovation that the wellbeing space rarely sees.
Building it right also means building it right on the inside: a small team, and a culture that lives our purpose. Wellbeing, belonging, connection, creativity. You won't just join this culture, you'll help create it. A place where you do the best work of your life and enjoy doing it.
What we offer
- A well-funded, long-horizon playground to work on solutions others find too ambitious, with real influence over what we create and the culture we create it in.
- Salary CHF 130,000 to 155,000 at 100 percent.
- A budget for models, API and tools, and the equipment you choose.
- Get paid to meditate: 30 minutes daily, during working hours.
- CHF 500 a month for your own development. Courses, training, coaching, whatever you want to try.
- Six weeks of vacation, a 40-hour work week, and a flexible workload from 60 to 100 percent to suit your life.
- Two days a week together in a lovely office ten minutes walk from Zurich HB, the rest wherever you work best.
- A culture intentionally designed to be the opposite of the burnout startup: psychologically safe, human, and all the more innovative for it.
- Further benefits, which we shape together with you in our conversations.
An honest note
This is an early-stage experiment. In a decade, Vinyamo could be a household name that has improved millions of lives. Or we could learn within a year that it's too ambitious, and stop. That's the nature of working on what the world calls impossible: no guarantees, only the chance to change things. This suits someone the attempt itself excites.
Practical
Employer: Vinyamo AG, Limmatquai 116, Zurich. Format: 60 to 100 percent. Contract: permanent. Start: as soon as possible. Eligibility: Swiss or EU citizenship, or a valid Swiss work permit.
Apply
Send your CV and GitHub to [email protected] with a short note answering two questions: what sparked your interest, and what has been the most transformative experience of your own life so far. The second question matters as much as the first.
Requirements
- You have shipped machine learning to production.
- You have shipped a product that real people use.
- You work with coding agents every day.
- You work independently, ask the right questions, and make sound decisions.
- You've done real work on yourself. Whatever your path, through therapy, meditation, coaching, ceremony, sport, art or life itself, this mission feels personal to you.
Responsibilities
- Build the platform from the first line of code: data pipeline, models, backend, interface.
- Research and experiment to find the best machine learning approaches for modeling human experience.
- Ship the first public release.
- Work directly with the founder as a genuine thought partner: question, contribute, and shape both the product and the culture from day one.
Vinyamo builds a research platform that learns what actually helps people heal, grow and live well. It reads lived experience at scale, alongside measured data, and shows each person their own fastest route to a life that fits. You would be one of the first people in the world building a model of human experience with the freedom and funding to do it right.