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Founding AI Engineer (Computer Vision)

EQL Tech

San Francisco, CAFull-time$180–240K/yrPosted 4w agoVerified open 4 days ago
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At a glance

Compensation
$180–240K/yr
Location
San Francisco, CA
Schedule
Full-time
Work Authorization
Visa required • Visa sponsorship

Job overview

EQL Tech is hiring a Founding AI Engineer (Computer Vision). The Founding AI Engineer will own the AI core of a stealth, seed-stage startup building an AI-powered wearable platform for industrial field technicians. This role involves building and shipping agentic vision-language model (VLM) systems that perform multimodal visual reasoning, evals, and model orchestration, running on real hardware against industrial workflows. The company is backed by a $5M seed round and founded by researchers from Harvard/NASA and MIT.

Key focus areas include Build and ship agentic VLM systems that reliably do visual reasoning in production, Own model orchestration and build real evals discipline, and Work directly with the founding team, shaping the AI roadmap from day one.

Successful candidates bring 1-5 Years Applied AI/ML Experience, Shipped Multimodal/CV Systems To Production, and Startup Or AI-Team Production Experience. Important skills include Computer Vision, Multimodal Visual Reasoning, Model Orchestration, Evals Discipline, Detection, and Segmentation.

Skills & qualifications

RequiredNice to have

Skills

Computer VisionMultimodal Visual ReasoningModel OrchestrationEvals DisciplineDetectionSegmentationImage UnderstandingVideo UnderstandingApplied VLM/Multimodal EngineeringApplied Agentic AIEdge/on-Device InferenceOn-Prem ServingFine-TuningvLLMSFTQuantizationRAG Against Knowledge BasesProduction AR/Wearable AIAutonomous-Driving CVIndustrial Domain Exposure

Qualifications

1-5 Years Applied AI/ML ExperienceShipped Multimodal/CV Systems to ProductionStartup or AI-Team Production ExperienceVisa Sponsorship Available

Full job description

Founding AI Engineer (Computer Vision) On-site · Engineering, Product & Tech · Full time San Francisco, California, United States

Our client is a stealth, seed-stage startup building an AI-powered wearable platform for industrial field technicians - running a real-time computer-vision and agentic AI system directly on smart-glasses hardware, live today with major data-center, energy, and industrial customers across multiple countries. Backed by a $5M seed round and founded by researchers from Harvard/NASA (computer vision, published at NeurIPS and ICCV) and MIT (machine learning, ex-quant researcher).

The bet: computer vision and agentic vision-language models (VLMs) grounded in real integrations with legacy enterprise systems (ServiceNow, SAP, Salesforce) - not another LLM wrapper. The industrial data this generates is also laying the groundwork for robotics automation down the line.

As Founding AI Engineer, you'll own the AI core: an agentic vision-language model (VLM) system doing multimodal visual reasoning, evals, and model orchestration, running on real hardware against real industrial workflows - not benchmark demos.

What you'll do

  • Build and ship agentic VLM systems that reliably do visual reasoning in production (detection, segmentation, image/video understanding)
  • Own model orchestration and build real evals discipline (ground-truth, trajectory, or regression harnesses)
  • Work directly with the founding team, shaping the AI roadmap from day one Location & culture Fully on-site in the SF Bay Area. The founding team lives and works together for the first several months in a shared house before moving to a standard office - expect an intense, in-person, roughly 9-9-6 pace. Hours flex for exceptional, senior talent; the priority is getting the right person, not saving on salary.

Requirements

Essential

  • 1–5 years applied AI/ML experience, ideally computer vision or multimodal — a practical builder, not a career academic

  • Has shipped multimodal/CV systems to production in the VLM era, owning the model layer end-to-end

  • Applied VLM/multimodal engineering specifically — vision-language, not sensor-fusion, audio-only, or time-series

  • Applied agentic AI/model orchestration plus real evals discipline

  • Startup or AI-team production experience, ideally as founder/CTO/founding engineer Particularly valuable

  • Edge/on-device inference; on-prem serving and fine-tuning (vLLM, SFT, quantization)

  • RAG against knowledge bases

  • Production AR/wearable AI or autonomous-driving CV experience

  • Industrial domain exposure Benefits

Compensation & benefits

  • Base: $180K–$240K
  • Equity: 0.25%–0.75%
  • Visa sponsorship available (O-1, TN, E-3, H-1B1, H-1B transfer, F-1 OPT/STEM OPT) How to apply: resume plus a short description of the most complex production VLM/CV system you've shipped.

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