Member of Technical Staff, Forward Deployed AI Engineer

• Software engineering fundamentals: This is a software engineering role. Expect to spend 70%+ of your time writing code. You'll need strong command of CS fundamentals, including data structures and algorithms, to design and build reliable, scalable systems.
• Enterprise customer deployments: Work directly with strategic enterprise customers to identify high-value AI workflows and turn them into production deployments.
• Rapid prototyping: Build and run fast proof-of-concepts, iterating on customer requirements and technical constraints on 2-week cycles.
• Production AI applications: Build full-stack AI applications, agentic workflows, integrations, internal tools, and customer-facing systems that bring Inception models into real enterprise environments.
• Data collection & feedback loops: Collect, structure, and operationalize customer data to improve model and product performance on customer use cases.
• Measurement and Evaluation: Define success metrics for customer deployments and design LLM-as-judge workflows, evaluation harnesses, and feedback loops for customer-specific use cases.
• Model and product optimization: Tune and customize Mercury models, prompts, workflows, and system architecture to meet customer-specific performance goals.
• Agentic workflows: Build and optimize agentic workflows including subagents involving classification, routing, context compaction, search, coding agents, voice, and other latency-sensitive applications.
• Build, prove, and generalize: Turn customer-specific deployments into repeatable product patterns, eval frameworks, implementation playbooks, and platform capabilities that improve Inception’s core product.

• BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• Strong engineering skills in Python and modern full-stack development, including APIs, backend systems, and ideally TypeScript/JavaScript.
• Experience building, deploying, or integrating AI/LLM products with real users or customers.
• Familiarity with LLM evaluation, LLM-as-judge workflows, data pipelines, model tuning, prompt optimization, or agentic workflows.
• Customer-facing experience with enterprise, strategic, or high-value accounts.
• Experience deploying software or AI systems in enterprise environments with security, privacy, reliability, compliance, or integration constraints.
• Strong communication and discovery skills, with the ability to translate ambiguous customer needs into concrete technical solutions.
• Ability to operate across engineering, product, sales, and customer success without requiring heavy process or handholding.
• Willingness to work directly with customers in person when needed, including occasional travel for strategic deployments, workshops, and executive technical sessions.

• Experience with RAG, search, voice AI, coding agents, or agentic workflow systems.
• Experience deploying AI systems for Fortune 500 or large enterprise customers.
• Track record owning technical pre-sales, post-sales, implementation, or customer expansion for million-dollar enterprise accounts.
• Familiarity with LLM serving, latency optimization, model evaluation, or production ML systems.
• Experience with data engineering, synthetic data generation, or feedback loops for model improvement.
• Background in product engineering, ML product engineering, applied AI, or forward deployed engineering.
• Experience working with customer-specific evals, benchmarks, and performance targets.
• Familiarity with latency-sensitive applications, especially voice systems where response speed is critical.

Compensation

• Work with World-Class Talent: Collaborate with the inventors of diffusion models and leading AI researchers
• Shape Foundational Technology: Your decisions will influence how the next generation of AI products are built and used
• Immediate Impact: Join at the ground floor where your contributions directly shape product direction and company trajectory

• Competitive salary and equity in a rapidly growing startup
• Flexible vacation and paid time off (PTO)
• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• 401k match
• Catered meals (breakfast, lunch, & dinner)
• Commuter subsidies
• A collaborative and inclusive culture