Machine Learning Engineer / Researcher

David Joseph & Company is building an AI powered CAD assistant designed to understand design intent and accelerate hardware engineering. The Senior Machine Learning Engineer / Researcher will own the full ML lifecycle for this product, switching between rigorous research and practical engineering to ship robust features. This onsite role is based in San Mateo, part of a small founding team with opportunities to mentor new hires and grow toward Staff or Principal IC or early engineering leadership.

Responsibilities

• Design, train, and iterate on bespoke deep learning models that capture CAD workflows and offer high quality next-step suggestions
• Build and maintain robust Python based training and evaluation pipelines, including data preprocessing, experimentation, and offline and online metrics
• Architect model serving and backend components to keep features fast, reliable, and easy to integrate into CAD environments
• Collaborate closely with the founder and early customers, including mechanical and hardware engineers, to translate real-world workflows into ML formulations
• Own the end-to-end lifecycle of ML features—from research and prototyping through productionization, deployment, and monitoring
• Work with the broader engineering team on core product and infrastructure tasks such as backend services, APIs, data models, and performance optimization
• Establish and promote best practices for experimentation, logging, and model comparison
• Stay current on relevant ML research, including sequence models, geometric deep learning, and representation learning, applying insights pragmatically

Requirements

• 4+ years of hands-on ML experience, or an equivalent research-based Master’s or PhD
• Proven track record of training and improving deep models, not just calling hosted APIs
• Expert with PyTorch (preferred), TensorFlow, or JAX — capable of implementing and modifying custom architectures, loss functions, and training loops
• Strong production-ready Python — clean, well-structured code with tests, documentation, and thoughtful abstractions
• End-to-end ownership experience — data to deployment, training pipelines, hyperparameter tuning, shipping models into real products
• Ability to work closely with founders and translate open-ended product requirements into concrete ML formulations
• Able to commute to San Mateo for onsite or hybrid work
• US work authorization required — no sponsorship available

Technologies

• Python
• PyTorch
• TensorFlow
• JAX
• FastAPI
• Flask
• Django
• AWS
• GCP

Compensation

USD 110,000 - 175,000 per year

Benefits

• Competitive salary and meaningful equity
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Catered team lunch in the San Mateo office
• Unlimited or flexible time off
• High-ownership role on a small, senior founding team

About the Company

The company is building an AI powered CAD system to transform how hardware is designed and manufactured. Founded by seasoned deep-tech entrepreneurs with backgrounds at top YC companies and frontier robotics, the team aims to turn CAD into an intelligent collaborator that understands design intent and autocompletes work, enabling hardware teams to move from weeks of repetitive clicking to minutes of high-leverage engineering. YC-backed, a 5–10 person team based in San Mateo.

About the Role

This is the first senior ML and research hire at the company. You will own the full lifecycle of ML systems powering the AI driven CAD product, partnering with the founders to scope problems, design and train novel models, and ship robust production code. Over time you may define the roadmap for CAD focused ML research, mentor future hires, and grow into a Staff or Principal IC or early engineering leader.

Nice to Have

• Experience with geometry, graphics, CAD, 3D representations, or robotics
• Familiarity with cloud ML platforms (AWS/GCP) and backend frameworks (FastAPI, Flask, Django)
• Published research or meaningful open-source contributions demonstrating novel technical work

Interview Process

• Short online survey (about 15 minutes)
• Initial call (30–45 minutes) with the founders
• Take-home coding and ML exercise (target about 8 hours)
• Onsite or virtual technical interviews with CEO, CTO, and engineering team focusing on ML system design, research thinking, and production engineering
• Offer

Logistics

• Onsite preferred in San Mateo; Bay Area candidates willing to commute considered
• US work authorization required — no visa sponsorship or relocation assistance available