Founding Machine Learning Engineer
clera · Munich · onsite
ABOUT THE ROLE
As the founding machine learning engineer at an early-stage AI company, you will build the ML function from the ground up. You will shape post-training and agent systems, set technical priorities, and help grow the team.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Structure, filter, and score experimental trajectories for training data pipelines.
- Design and implement evaluations and benchmarks for model reasoning, planning, and experimental progress.
- Build reliable agent environments, tool interfaces, observability systems, and replay infrastructure.
- Establish validation and provenance tracking for trajectory and data quality.
- Set ML roadmap priorities across systems, experiments, and hiring, and guide the team's technical direction as it grows.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
- At least 3 years of machine learning engineering experience building or delivering production ML systems, with 3 to 8 years of overall relevant experience preferred.
- Strong Python and systems-level programming skills, with production software engineering experience.
- Hands-on experience with post-training ML, including data pipelines for structuring, filtering, and scoring training data.
- Experience designing and implementing model evaluation frameworks and benchmarks.
- Understanding of trajectories, reward structures, tool use, and agent environment design; experience with reinforcement learning algorithms and training systems is valuable.
- Experience building agent environments, replay and debugging tools, data validation, provenance tracking, or ML pipeline observability is a plus.
- Background in frontier AI research, scaled post-training or evaluation teams, or production agent systems is beneficial.
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
Annual salary range: $100,000 to $250,000 USD. Visa sponsorship is not available.
LOCATION
On-site in Munich, Germany. Other listed locations include Zurich, Switzerland, and San Francisco, United States; remote arrangements may be discussed.