Founding AI/ML Engineer
Veho
Software Engineering, Data Science
San Francisco, CA, USA
USD 190k-260k / year + Equity
Posted on Mar 10, 2026
Founding AI/ML Engineer
San Francisco
Engineering
Hybrid
Full-time
About Gem
Gem is the only AI-first all-in-one recruiting platform. It brings together your ATS, CRM, sourcing, scheduling, and analytics — plus 800+ million profiles to source from — with AI built into every workflow. By eliminating the headaches of juggling multiple tools, Gem helps customers boost recruiter productivity by up to 5x while saving 30-50% on technology costs. Over 1,000 organizations — from startups to industry leaders like Zillow, DoorDash, and Asana — trust Gem to fuel their growth. With an industry-leading 4.8/5 rating on G2, Gem is the platform recruiters actually love to use. Gem has raised $148M from renown investors including Accel, Greylock, ICONIQ, Sapphire, and Meritech.
With Gem, you can experience the power of a truly connected recruiting platform — one consistent interface, unified data, smarter AI recommendations, and simplified permissions. Our customers achieve remarkable results.
Just as we strive to help our customers find great talent, we also invest in our own people and culture. We are proud of the culture we’ve built and have recently been recognized as:
- Forbes America's Best Startup Employers 2025
- Great Place to Work Certified, 2024
- Fortune Best Workplaces for Millennials, 2023
We work in our San Francisco office three days per week. In-person collaboration is core to how we ship quickly and build great products together.
About the Role
We're looking for a senior or staff AI/ML Engineer to design and ship production-grade AI features that transform how companies hire. You'll be one of the first AI/ML engineers at Gem, shaping both the technology and how we build. You'll work on challenges like building intelligent search systems that surface perfect candidates from massive talent pools, creating AI tools that help recruiters craft personalized outreach, and extracting insights from candidate profiles and recruiting activity. You'll own your work end-to-end, from prototype to production, and iterate quickly based on real recruiter feedback.
Recruiting is an industry ripe for AI transformation. Unlike chatbots or summarization tools, our AI directly impacts whether companies succeed or fail by finding them exceptional talent.
What You'll Do
- Build multi-step reasoning systems that understand nuanced recruiter queries like 'senior ML engineers who've worked at YC companies and know PyTorch' – currently processing 800M+ profiles
- Develop intelligent search that understands recruiter intent and surfaces the right candidates instantly
- Ship rapidly and iterate by moving from prototype to production, measuring performance, and refining based on live product data and user feedback
- Collaborate closely with product managers, designers, and engineers in our SF office to create cohesive AI-driven experiences
- Share ML expertise with teammates and help establish best practices for model development and evaluation
What You'll Need
Core technical skills:
- Experience applying AI/ML in production environments, especially with LLMs
- Hands-on knowledge of retrieval and search systems, including query understanding, ranking, and relevance optimization
- Familiarity with vector databases and embedding models for AI applications
- Understanding of retrieval architectures and their implementation
- Pragmatic approach to AI. You find the right balance between cutting-edge techniques and scalable, maintainable solutions
How you work:
- Problem-solving: You approach problems holistically, starting with clear understanding of context. You navigate ambiguity well, decompose complex problems into clean solutions, and think critically about real-world impact
- Shipping quality products: You partner closely with product and design to craft experiences that feel effortless. You understand the balance between craft, speed, and business impact
- Communication and collaboration: You explain technical concepts clearly to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders. You engage thoughtfully in disagreements and compromise when needed
- Velocity and ownership: You're excited by quick experimentation and continuous improvement. You take pride in shipping features from start to finish
- User focus: You care about business impact and prioritize accordingly. You think critically about how your work shapes real people's daily workflows
Nice to Haves
- Prior startup experience (especially 0→1 product)
- Prompt and context engineering skills or experience with LLM fine-tuning
- Background in information retrieval, NLP, or recommendation systems
- Experience implementing feedback loops to improve search quality over time
- Track record of shipping AI features that balance product craftsmanship with technical rigor
How We Work
We've intentionally invested in removing development friction:
- Local development with Vite boots instantly with hot-reload
- CI finishes in about 10 minutes, and commits deploy to production immediately
- We ship quickly and iterate based on customer feedback
We take pride in having an unusually good engineering culture:
- Reasonable working hours
- Weekly team activities and happy hours
- Regular hackathons where we build experimental features
- Work with a world class team from Meta, Uber, and Dropbox
Benefits
- 10-year stock option exercise window
- Flexible Time Off and 16 paid holidays (including company wellness days)
- Best-in-class medical, dental, and vision coverage
- $1,200 annual learning and development stipend
- 16 weeks paid parental leave for all parents, plus $1,500 new-parent perk and flexible return-to-work options
Role Details
- Location: This role is based 3 days per week out of our San Francisco HQ and is not eligible for full-time remote work.
- Compensation: The annual cash compensation range for this position is $190,000–$260,000 based on level in addition to equity & benefits.
The range displayed on this job posting reflects the minimum and maximum compensation. Factors including location, level, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience will determine compensation.
Gem is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate our inclusive work environment and encourage folks of all backgrounds and perspectives to apply. At Gem, we’re committed to having an inclusive and transparent environment where every voice is heard and acknowledged. We embrace our differences, and know that our diverse team is a strength that drives our success. Gem is committed to developing a barrier-free recruitment process and work environment. If you require any accommodation, please email us at accommodations@gem.com and we’ll work with you to meet your accessibility needs.
Gem’s Candidate Privacy Notice
By clicking “Submit Application”, you acknowledge and agree that you have read and understand Gem’s Candidate Privacy Statement, including the information provided on how Gem processes your personal data and your related rights as set forth therein.
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VEVRAA requires Government contractors to take affirmative action to employ and advance in employment protected veterans. To help us measure the effectiveness of our outreach and recruitment efforts of veterans, we are asking you to tell us if you are a veteran covered by VEVRAA. If you believe that you belong to any of the following categories of protected veterans, please indicate by making the appropriate selection.
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Disabled veteran
A veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military and is entitled to disability compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to disability compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, or was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disabilityRecently separated veteran
A veteran separated during the three-year period beginning on the date of the veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S military, ground, naval, or air serviceActive duty wartime or campaign badge veteran
A veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge was authorized under the laws administered by the Department of DefenseArmed Forces service medal veteran
A veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military ground, naval, or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985 (61 Fed. Reg. 1209).Veteran status
Req ID: R20220277
