Member of Technical Staff, Applied Research — Sieve

Location: San Francisco, CA (Onsite)Compensation: $150,000 – $350,000 base + 0.05% – 0.4% equityVisa Sponsorship: H-1B, O-1, OPT supportedExperience Level: 2+ yearsEmployment Type: Full-TimeHeadcount: 4 open seatsAbout SieveSieve is the only AI research company exclusively focused on video data infrastructure and video intelligence. Their thesis: high-quality video training data is the key bottleneck limiting progress in video AI, robotics, AR/VR, generative media, and agentic systems. Sieve is building the infrastructure and datasets to solve that bottleneck.Exabyte-scale video infrastructureProprietary video understanding systems and internet-scale data processingPartners with top frontier AI labs and Fortune 100 enterprise customersSeries A raised from Matrix Partners, Swift Ventures, Y Combinator, and AI GrantTeam of approximately 12Video represents 80% of internet traffic — and Sieve is building the foundational layer to advance video AI at scale.About The RoleThis is a deeply technical applied research engineering role sitting between research and production engineering. The focus is building scalable video understanding infrastructure and applied AI systems — not pure academic research.Core ownership includes:High-performance video understanding building blocksLarge-scale video processing pipelinesComputer vision, audio processing, and text processing workflowsApplied model optimization and pre/post-processing optimizationParallelized inference systems and pipeline orchestrationInference performance optimization and selective model fine-tuningCustomer-driven problem decompositionEnd-to-end applied AI product deliveryRequirements2+ years of computer vision or audio processing experienceStrong Python engineering backgroundHands-on PyTorch or similar ML framework expertiseClean, maintainable production codeStrong communication with customers and external stakeholdersPassion for video and media technologiesProduct mindset — not research-onlyAbility to break customer problems into technical building blocksWillingness to work onsite in San FranciscoNice to HaveOpen source contributions or strong GitHub / portfolio projectsStartup early-hire experienceApplied research independenceVideo AI domain expertiseRobotics experienceHigh-performance inference optimization and pipeline architectureTarget BackgroundsStrong signals include backgrounds from Meta, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Google, Waymo, Intrinsic, and David AI, with direct computer vision experience, robotics exposure, and applied performance engineering depth.Ideal Candidate ArchetypesApplied computer vision engineersVideo AI specialistsRobotics perception engineersAudio AI engineersResearch engineers who ship production systemsStartup technical builders with optimization depthThis Role Is NOT ForCandidates with less than 2 years of relevant experienceProfiles without independent research or technical ownershipThose without a top-tier technical backgroundCandidates with weak video or computer vision relevanceBenefitsCompetitive compensation and equity participationHealth insuranceFree lunch and dinnerInterview ProcessApplication reviewInitial screenTechnical chat with CTOTechnical interviewCEO conversationOnsiteOfferLogisticsRole is fully onsite in San Francisco — please only apply if you can commit to thisH-1B, O-1, and OPT visa sponsorship availableShortlisted candidates will be contacted by David Joseph & Co., the recruiting partner managing this search on behalf of Sieve.