Founding ML Research Engineer
Company websitegetclera.com (Clera, opens in new tab)
Base salary $200K to $300K
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 (1 h ago) · observed since
About this job
About the Role
Join the founding team at a Y Combinator-backed AI assistant startup to build the models and systems behind a useful, reliable AI agent. You will lead hands-on research and engineering that improves answer quality while managing latency, cost, and safety, and ship improvements to users regularly.
What You'll Do
Build evaluation harnesses using model judges, human preference data, and regression tests to guide release decisions.
Post-train models through supervised fine-tuning, preference tuning, and distillation, then ship the results to production.
Develop model routing that balances answer quality, latency, and cost across smaller and frontier models.
Improve agent performance on websites without APIs, including navigation, sign-in, and checkout, with appropriate escalation when needed.
Identify and address prompt injection, data leakage, and other risks through adversarial testing and evaluations.
Advance memory, retrieval, tool selection, and decisions about when the agent should act or ask for help.
Review real conversations and turn findings into evaluation and model improvements.
What We're Looking For
At least 4 years of ML or software engineering experience at an AI lab, AI product company, or similar organization.
Hands-on experience fine-tuning or post-training LLMs and deploying the results to production.
Experience designing evaluations that teams have used to make product release decisions.
Background in at least one area: LLM red teaming, browser or computer-use agents, model routing, or production agents with tools and persistent memory.
Strong Python skills and experience with ML training and evaluation tools, plus TypeScript experience in a product codebase.
A hands-on, founding-team approach, with interest in setting technical direction and helping grow the team.
Compensation & Benefits
Salary range: $200,000 to $300,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.
Location
On-site in San Francisco, California, United States.
Source: Clera on Ashby · View original posting (opens in new tab)
This listingFounding ML Research Engineer$200K to $300K
Founding Product Engineer$200K to $250K
Senior Silicon Engineer$200K to $300K
Founding Engineer$200K to $300K
Founding Enterprise Account Executive$200K to $250K
Founding Engineering Lead$200K to $400K
Founding DevOps Engineer$200K to $300K
Chart as a table
| Role | Published base |
|---|---|
| Founding ML Research Engineer (this listing) | $200K - $300K |
| Founding Product Engineer | $200K - $250K |
| Senior Silicon Engineer | $200K - $300K |
| Founding Engineer | $200K - $300K |
| Founding Enterprise Account Executive | $200K - $250K |
| Founding Engineering Lead | $200K - $400K |
| Founding DevOps Engineer | $200K - $300K |
Observed changes
- First observed on the employer's board
- Began meeting the published-salary criteria
- Observed since
- Employer-stated posting date
- 2026-10-15
Where this pay comes from
Location as the employer wrote it: San Francisco
Salary range: $200,000 to $300,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is not 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.