Member of Technical Staff

AI for Advanced Manufacturing • San Francisco (On-site)

Location

San Francisco, CA (On-site, 5 days/week)

Compensation

$150k–$300k base + meaningful early equity · US persons only (ITAR)

About the company

Our client is an early-stage AI company in San Francisco building autonomous operating systems for factories. Their platform connects the fragmented systems inside a plant — ERPs, MES, PLCs, sensors, and spreadsheets — into a single data layer, then runs AI agents that schedule work, dispatch jobs to operators, and optimize throughput on live production floors. Seven engineers, backed by a top-tier seed fund, already deployed and generating revenue at a precision aerospace manufacturer. Founded in 2024.

The role

You'd join as an early member of technical staff on a seven-person engineering team, owning customer-facing features end to end on real production floors. This is a full-stack product seat with a systems floor: Python for the application layer, C where the software meets the machines, and LLM and agent orchestration in between. Because it runs inside live manufacturing environments, the work is unusually concrete — you get to watch the throughput number move.

What you'll do

Own customer-facing features end to end, from the plant-floor requirement through to production
Integrate the fragmented systems inside a factory — ERPs, MES, PLCs, sensors, and spreadsheets — into one data layer
Write the systems-level code where the platform meets real machines and real-time data
Build and orchestrate AI agents that schedule work, dispatch jobs to operators, and optimize throughput
Work directly with operators and engineers on live production floors, iterating on what you see there
Help set the technical bar early, on a team of seven

What we're looking for

These are hard requirements. Check each one that applies to you.

US person — US citizen or green card holder. Required for ITAR compliance: no visa sponsorship, no visa transfers, no exceptions.
Based in San Francisco and able to be in the office 5 days a week
Systems-level programming with evidence — C, C++, Rust, firmware, or other low-level work, from a high-intensity engineering environment
Fluent in Python — it's the primary application language alongside the systems layer
Demonstrated individual end-to-end ownership of a production, customer-facing feature
2–8 years of professional software engineering experience

Please note: every item above is a hard requirement for this role. Applications that don't meet all of them will be rejected. We recommend applying only if you check every box.

Don't check every box? No worries — submit your info here and we'll keep you in mind for roles that could be a better fit.

Submit Your Info

Nice to have

C, embedded, or firmware experience — the strongest single signal for this team
Background at an ITAR-bound company (aerospace, space, defense, or hard robotics)
Founder or first-engineer experience
Reinforcement learning, or a track record making non-deterministic systems reliable
Robotics, autonomy, or industrial-automation exposure

Tech stack

Python and C, with LLMs and agent orchestration, reinforcement learning, PostgreSQL, and AWS.

Before you apply

This is an ITAR-controlled role. The team can only hire US citizens and green card holders — there is no visa sponsorship and no visa transfer available. Please check this before applying.
The systems bar is real: generalist ML/AI work or large-company application development won't clear it on its own. The team wants evidence you've written low-level code in a demanding environment.
San Francisco, five days a week in office. The team is not hiring remotely or in other cities.

Compensation & logistics

$150k–$300k base + meaningful early equity (seed-stage)
San Francisco — on-site 5 days/week
Must be a US person — a US citizen or green card holder — for ITAR compliance. No visa sponsorship and no visa transfers.
Full-time · hiring up to 5 for this role

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