Artificial Intelligence Engineer

Build AI that ships to real customers — on the East Coast, with the teams defining the category. Key Talent Solutions partners with a portfolio of venture-backed, AI-native companies hiring across New York, Philadelphia, the DC corridor, and remote — from YC-backed founders to fast-scaling teams already in production with paying customers. We're hiring across the builder spectrum: founding AI/ML engineers, forward-deployed engineers, and applied-AI core engineers. One conversation, multiple doors. Tell us how you build and we'll match you to the room where you'll do your best work. The seats we're filling right now Founding / early AI/ML engineers — founder-grade ownership at seed and YC-backed startups. Production AI, retrieval, and document intelligence, built end-to-end alongside the founders. Forward Deployed Engineers — embed with enterprise customers, deploy AI into real production environments, and own delivery from first call to live system. Applied-AI core engineers — retrieval, agentic workflows, evals, fine-tuning, and the backend that powers them at customer scale. What we're looking for (across all tracks) You've built and owned something in production — not just contributed to it AI shipped to real customers — production, not demos or research Strong fundamentals; most seats sit in the 3–8 year range, with room earlier for an exceptional builder A bias to ship, comfort with ambiguity, and genuine engineering depth (not scripting around problems) Based on the US East Coast (NYC / Philadelphia / DC) or able to work East Coast / UK hours remotely Strong bonus signals Prior startup or founding experience — founding member, co-founder, or unmistakable founder-to-be energy Document-intelligence / retrieval background (the Hebbia / Reducto / Extend / Instabase lane) Infrastructure & deployment depth — Kubernetes, distributed systems, enterprise integration (forward-deployed seats) Pedigree (MIT / CMU / Princeton / Columbia / Cornell / Penn / Waterloo) or a frontier lab (Anthropic / OpenAI / DeepMind) — a plus, ranked below real build/ship signal Compensation: $125K–$240K+ base, plus equity. Exact range and equity depend on the specific client, stage, and seniority — we'll be straight with you about the band on the first call. Not a fit: vibe-coders, title-seekers, pure-research profiles with no production track record, traditional/legacy-enterprise DevOps with no startup signal, and anyone who needs defined scope / tickets / process to move. Show more Show less