AI Engineer

Location: Onsite - Austin, TX

Employment Type: Direct Hire, Full‑Time

Job Title: Senior AI Engineer

Company Overview

We are a funded startup building autonomous machines for defense markets. Our first product is designed to counter small, fast FPV suicide drones — also known as Group 1 / sUAS, similar to those seen in the Russia‑Ukraine conflict. Our robots require world‑class perception and decision‑making. We are currently focused on defensive systems, with the potential to expand into offensive, lethal systems in the future.

Position Summary

We are seeking a Senior AI Engineer to join a small, experienced team. You will be the computational “brain” behind our next‑generation counter‑small unmanned aerial systems (c‑sUAS).

We don’t use RAG, LLMs, or pre-built cloud APIs. Our stack requires building from the ground up to solve high-stakes problems under strict Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) constraints. You should be capable of building models from scratch and have a fundamental understanding of the problem space.

Essential Duties

• From-Scratch Modeling: Designing, training, and optimizing novel neural network architectures for threat classification and imitation learning-based control systems.

• Real-Time Execution: Deploying low-latency models to the edge (e.g., NVIDIA Jetson) where milliseconds determine the success of an interception.

• Sensor Fusion: Implementing robust techniques to interpret disparate data streams—radar, RF, acoustic, and optical—into a single world model.

• Anomaly Detection: Ensuring our systems identify custom-built, "zero-day" threats not found in any training set.

• Collaboration: Collaborate with the robotics and computer vision teams to ensure model output seamlessly translates into real‑time trajectory predictions for interceptor guidance.

Requirements

• Non-negotiable proficiency in Python and deep experience in PyTorch/TensorFlow AND understanding of the underlying linear algebra and calculus well enough to write core algorithms from scratch.

• Ability to thrive in a high-velocity environment where we "build-test-fail-repeat" daily.

• Understanding of the constraints of the "defense edge" and have practical experience optimizing models for resource-constrained hardware.

• U.S. Citizenship and the ability to pass a background check

Nice‑to‑Have

• Prior defense startup experience

• Passion for building robots or engineering projects as a hobby

Benefits

• Competitive salary + early equity

• Opportunity to build systems the Department of Defense actively needs

• New lab equipped with Jetsons, scopes, and 3‑D printers

• Direct influence on product and technology roadmap

• 100% employer paid health, dental, and vision insurance

• 50% employer paid health, dental, and vision insurance for dependents

• Unlimited PTO

• Relocation assistance

About the interview

1. Application screen phone call (30 min)

2. Virtual interview with co-founder #1 (30 min via MS Teams)

3. Paid take-home ($500, ~4-8 hours)

4. Review work

5. Virtual interview with co-founder #2 (45 min via MS Teams)

6. In-person visit to Austin/Offer