Founding AI Engineer | Frontier LLM Systems | $500k+ & Equity | NYC

Founding AI Engineer | Frontier LLM Systems | $500k+ & Equity | New York CityDue to regulatory constraints this role is only open to US citizens.We’re hiring for a high-bar founding AI engineering team building mission-critical LLM, RAG & agentic systems for complex aerospace & defence operations.The bar (& current team) is high. Only the top 0.1% of AI Engineers can do this. If you’ve built real mission-critical LLM systems that can’t fail - this could be your next move.The RoleYou’ll own & scale a RAG-driven AI system powering critical aerospace operations. Expect to tackle retrieval quality, latency bottlenecks, & eval-driven fine-tuning head-on for the most innovative & exciting real-time systems in Aerospace today. This is full production ownership - from architecture to metrics.You should have experience with:Deploying LLM-based systems at scale (Llama, Mistral, GPT-4, Claude)Retrieval optimisation - hybrid search (BM25 + vector), reranking, cachingEvaluation - recall@k, precision@k, groundedness, hallucination metricsFine-tuning (LoRA/QLoRA), RAG architecture, LangChain / LlamaIndexTooling: Hugging Face, Weaviate/Pinecone, FastAPI, PyTorch, Redis, PostgresMonitoring inference, eval automation, & continuous improvement loopsBonus:IoT or Hardware integration or real-time systems experience exp.Ideal background:CS, ML, applied maths, EE or similar technical backgroundProven 0-1 experience in a fast-moving AI, defence-tech, aerospace, infra or hard-tech environmentStrong software engineering instincts - not just model experimentationExperience shipping reliable GenAI systems into real users or operational workflowsComfortable working directly with founders, domain experts & technical customersYou’ll be expected to:Own the LLM pipeline end-to-end – retrieval → evaluation → fine-tuningImprove accuracy, grounding, and eval metrics continuouslyMake architecture decisions for scale, reliability & speedCollaborate directly with founders & domain expertsStack:PythonPyTorchFastAPIPostgresRedisDockerKubernetesWeaviate or PineconeLangChain or LlamaIndexAWS or GCPOffer:Up to $500,000+ base salary + equityHybrid in NYCTight-knit, high-output teamHigh ownership, real impact, flat structureInterview Process:1) Technical Deep Dive2) Technical Assessment or Live Pairing3) Panel focused on mindset & team fitEqual OpportunityWe're hiring for an Equal Opportunity Employer.If you want to build AI systems that move beyond demos and into real-world, mission-critical use, then a conversation would be worth your time.TL;DR - Senior AI Engineer (NYC, On-site)Build & scale production-grade GenAI systems from 0 to 1Own and improve RAG pipelines - accuracy and latency matterDeep experience with LLMs, LangChain, Hugging Face & real deploymentsMust have shipped working GenAI products, not just prototypesIdeal: startup DNA, top-tier CS degree, fast execution mindset$500K base + equity*All our new jobs are posted here 1st:linkedin.com/in/sufyanbashir/