Founding Applied AI Engineer
Company websitegetclera.com (Clera, opens in new tab)
Base salary $180K to $230K
Employer-published annual base salary, USD. Advertised base range in San Francisco, CA
You apply on the employer's own site. Six Figure Work does not handle applications.
- LocationSan Francisco, CA
- WorkplaceOn-site
- Status at last checkSource accepting applications when checked
- Last checked (3 h ago) · observed since
About this job
About the Role
As the first senior AI hire at an early-stage AI marketing company, you will own the quality and intelligence of its multi-channel marketing agents. You will shape the agent architecture, evaluation systems, and learning loops, while helping build the AI team.
What You'll Do
Improve agent output and content quality across social platforms and article writing, using evaluation systems to measure results.
Improve search engine optimization and generative engine optimization performance.
Build feedback loops that help agents learn from real-world results and performance signals.
Improve production AI infrastructure, agent architecture, model strategy, and supporting data pipelines.
Help hire and lead the AI team as it grows.
What We're Looking For
At least 3 years building production machine learning or AI systems, with recent hands-on experience shipping LLM products or agents.
Experience designing evaluations and using outcome signals at scale in search, ranking, recommendations, or related domains.
Strong TypeScript, including Next.js, and Python skills for data analysis, evaluations, and model work, with a track record of shipping end to end.
Production experience in applied AI, such as LLM reasoning or post-training, generative AI, agentic systems, search, recommendation systems, algorithms, or machine learning research.
Experience building feedback loops and improving AI infrastructure, agent architecture, or model strategy in production.
Experience owning and shipping work in a startup or small team, plus strong research or applied AI achievements.
Search, ranking, or AI answer engine experience is valuable. Marketing or go-to-market experience is a plus; recommendation systems, algorithms, and reinforcement learning are also relevant backgrounds.
Compensation & Benefits
Annual base compensation is $180,000 to $230,000 USD. Visa sponsorship is available.
Location
On-site in San Francisco, California. Candidates must be based in or willing to relocate to San Francisco.
Source: Clera on Ashby · View original posting (opens in new tab)
Pay in context
This role's base floor ($180,000) is above 40% of the 1,492 Data & ML roles in California listed on this site; 56 others list the same floor. Their median floor is $190,000; the middle half runs from $160,000 to $229,900.
Only jobs on this site count, and each one publishes a base salary of $100,000 or more, so this compares six-figure jobs with each other, not with the whole market. Computed Nov 6, 2026.
This listingFounding Applied AI Engineer$180K to $230K
Founding Forward Deployed Engineer$180K to $250K
Head of Engineering$180K to $220K
QA Engineer$180K to $200K
Forward Deployed Engineer$180K to $220K
Founding Engineer$180K to $250K
Founding Product Engineer$180K to $250K
Chart as a table
| Role | Published base |
|---|---|
| Founding Applied AI Engineer (this listing) | $180K - $230K |
| Founding Forward Deployed Engineer | $180K - $250K |
| Head of Engineering | $180K - $220K |
| QA Engineer | $180K - $200K |
| Forward Deployed Engineer | $180K - $220K |
| Founding Engineer | $180K - $250K |
| Founding Product Engineer | $180K - $250K |
Observed changes
- Began meeting the published-salary criteria
- First observed on the employer's board
- Observed since
- Employer-stated posting date
- 2026-10-31
Where this pay comes from
Location as the employer wrote it: San Francisco
Annual base compensation is $180,000 to $230,000 USD. Visa sponsorship is available.
- Method
- Employer text, read with fixed rules and re-verified
- Checked
- Rule set
- us-base-v2
The pay passage appears in the employer's own job text. Fixed, deterministic rules located it, and the passage below was checked against the stored copy of the posting.
What we verified
- The pay figures come from the employer's own listing, quoted exactly above.
- The pay is an annual base salary in US dollars with a minimum of at least $100,000.
- The role was publicly listed on the employer's job board when last checked.
We do not verify what the employer will actually offer, whether the employer is still recruiting for the role, or anything beyond what the employer published. Full methodology.