Applied AI Engineer, Startups (Physical AI)
$280k - $320k • San Francisco, CA
Posted 7h ago
Job Location
San Francisco, CA
Tech Stack
Remote Work Policy
On-site
Categories
Applied AI Engineer
About the job
As an Applied AI Engineer on the Startups team, you will serve as a trusted technical advisor to leading AI-native startups focused on the physical world. You will guide companies in robotics, semiconductors, aerospace, manufacturing, and civil infrastructure as they scale from early product development to full production. This role involves deep technical engagements, partnering directly with startup software and hardware engineering teams to integrate Claude into their product design, testing, and operational workflows. You will bridge the gap between AI capabilities and the practicalities of building physical products, working alongside top teams on impactful problems and helping engineers achieve significant advancements through AI-powered tools.
Responsibilities
- Act as a deep technical advisor to high-potential physical world startups, integrating Claude into their products or internal processes.
- Work hands-on with startup software and hardware teams through pair programming and architecture reviews to accelerate development.
- Develop prototypes, technical documentation, evaluation suites, benchmarks, and AI engineering techniques for startups.
- Create reference implementations and sample code for integrating Claude with tools like CAD, simulation, and industrial automation.
- Collaborate with Applied AI Architects to ensure continuity across customer engagements.
- Identify challenges in applying AI to physical systems and build repeatable solutions, contributing insights to internal teams.
- Create technical content such as documentation, tutorials, and sample code for startup audiences.
- Foster community engagement through hackathons, webinars, and technical office hours.
- Travel to customer sites for workshops, implementation guidance, and relationship building.
Requirements
- Deep engineering experience in a physical discipline (mechanical, electrical, aerospace, robotics, semiconductor, manufacturing, civil engineering) with experience building or operating real hardware.
- 4+ years of technical experience as a software, ML, research, robotics, controls, hardware, or systems engineer, or technical founder.
- Experience building LLM-powered applications, including prompting, context engineering, agent architectures, evaluation frameworks, and deployment at scale.
- Proven track record of successfully applying AI to real engineering work in design, simulation, test, or production.
- Experience with startups or high-growth companies and a preference for working with fast-moving teams.
- Strong technical communication skills, able to translate complex AI concepts into actionable plans for software and hardware engineers.
- Ability to run technical workshops, hackathons, or developer-focused events.
- Collaborative approach and ability to context-switch across diverse engineering domains.
- Passion for making powerful technology safe and beneficial.