Job Description

Who is Recruiting from Scratch
Recruiting from Scratch is a premier talent firm that focuses on placing the best product managers, software, and hardware talent at innovative companies. Our team is 100% remote and we work with teams across the United States to help them hire.

Title of Role: Founding Engineer (ML / Data Infrastructure)

Location: San Francisco, CA (On-site, high-intensity culture)
Company Stage of Funding: Seed (~$10M+ raised)
Office Type: On-site (6 days/week typical)
Salary: $150,000 – $250,000 + Equity (up to ~2.5%)

Our client is an early-stage frontier AI + neuroscience startup building thought-to-text technology, enabling humans to interface with computers using neural signals. Their system trains machine learning models on neural data to translate intent directly into actions—unlocking a completely new paradigm of human-computer interaction.

This is a highly technical, research-heavy problem involving novel datasets, model architectures, and data infrastructure challenges that do not exist anywhere else. Backed by leading investors including Vinod Khosla, the company is operating at the cutting edge of AI, hardware, and neuroscience.

With a small, deeply technical team, this is a rare opportunity to join as a founding engineer and help define both the technical direction and long-term trajectory of the company.

What You Will Do

• Own and scale ML infrastructure from prototype to production
• Build and iterate on training pipelines, evaluation systems, and tooling
• Work on neural data pipelines from collection → processing → modeling
• Rapidly prototype and deploy machine learning models (0 → 1)
• Improve performance and reliability of ML systems in data-constrained environments
• Lead architectural decisions across ML systems and infrastructure
• Ship demos and prototypes to showcase cutting-edge capabilities
• Collaborate closely with founders on research and product direction
• Contribute to both model development and supporting infrastructure
• Take systems from early experimentation to scalable production

Ideal Candidate Background

• 2–10 years of experience in ML engineering, research, or data infrastructure
• Strong coding ability, particularly in Python
• Experience building systems from 0 → 1 in startups or research environments
• Exposure to machine learning systems or large-scale data pipelines
• Strong problem-solving ability and raw technical curiosity
• Comfortable working in ambiguous, high-intensity environments

Preferred

• Experience at frontier AI labs or high-growth startups
• Background in quantitative trading firms or highly technical environments
• Experience working with novel datasets or data-constrained ML problems
• Strong academic signals (top schools, Olympiads, etc.)
• Experience training or deploying ML models in production
• Interest in neuroscience, brain-computer interfaces, or novel modalities

Compensation and Benefits

• Base salary: $150,000 – $250,000
• Equity: up to ~2–2.5% (flexible based on candidate preference)
• Founding team-level ownership and impact
• Work on cutting-edge, category-defining technology
• Direct collaboration with founders and technical leadership
• High-growth, deeply technical environment

Why Join

This is a rare opportunity to work on a truly frontier problem at the intersection of AI and neuroscience—building systems that fundamentally change how humans interact with computers.

As a founding engineer, you will own critical systems from day one, working on problems that don’t exist anywhere else, with massive long-term upside both technically and financially.

If you’re motivated by hard problems, deep technical challenges, and outsized impact, this role offers a uniquely ambitious environment.