Shields Group Search · 4 hours ago
Founding Machine Learning Engineer
San Francisco, CA
Full-time
Onsite
Mid Level
$170K/yr - $260K/yr
3+ years expShields Group Search is partnering with an early-stage AI company focused on enterprise solutions. They are seeking a Founding Machine Learning Engineer to build, deploy, and iterate on machine learning models in production, translating research into scalable systems and shaping the engineering culture.
Staffing & Recruiting
Hiring Manager
Thomas Shields
Responsibilities
Build, deploy, and iterate on machine learning models in real production environments
Own model deployment workflows, tuning, evaluation, and performance optimization
Collaborate closely with founders on product direction and technical architecture
Write high-quality, production-ready code across ML systems and supporting infrastructure
Help establish early engineering best practices while remaining deeply hands-on
Contribute across the stack as needed in a fast-moving early-stage environment
Qualification
Required
3–5 years of professional experience in software engineering, ML engineering, or applied ML research
Strong MLE background with hands-on experience deploying and tuning models in production
Demonstrated ability to write real production code, not just prototypes or research artifacts
Experience working with modern ML frameworks and deployment workflows
High curiosity, strong learning aptitude, and comfort operating in ambiguity
Preferred
Applied ML research experience with a strong implementation bias
Early-stage startup experience
Exposure to AI infrastructure, model monitoring, or reliability tooling
Benefits
Competitive compensation and meaningful equity
Company
Shields Group Search
Shields Group Search specializes in serving early stage VC and PE backed companies.
2-10 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Early StageCompany data provided by crunchbase