Founding AI Engineer at Clera
San Francisco, CA
$150,000–$200,000from the description
Jul 18, 2026
San Francisco, CA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
An early engineering hire at a consumer AI startup focused on combating loneliness among young adults. The role centers on building social graph systems, group-matching algorithms, and end-to-end AI agent workflows that operate across third-party messaging platforms. It suits an ML engineer with production experience in recommender or matching systems who is comfortable owning infrastructure and iterating quickly in an early-stage environment.
Mid level · San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA · Full-time
Posted 2 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 340 people in the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 70–510
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
What the occupation pays Median $190,744 (middle half $167,095–$224,501). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (7)
The title 'Founding AI Engineer' carries no explicit seniority level; advertised seniority is Unspecified. The stated experience range of 0–4 years and the early-stage founding-team context support a Mid band (the role demands production AI/ML ownership but does not require org-wide technical authority).
The role is a genuine hybrid of software engineering (backend infrastructure, agent orchestration, API integration) and ML/data science (collaborative filtering, graph embeddings, reinforcement learning, recommender systems). 15-1252 Software Developers is the primary code because the JD emphasizes building and shipping production systems end-to-end; 15-2051 Data Scientists is the close runner-up given the depth of ML modeling requirements.
Messaging channel integrations (Instagram, iMessage, WhatsApp, TikTok) are cited as examples of the multi-channel API integration requirement — no single platform is hard-gated, so the skill is captured as 'messaging APIs'.
Social graph platforms and multi-agent orchestration frameworks appear under the 'Nice to Have' section.
No degree requirement is stated anywhere in the posting.
Visa sponsorship is explicitly unavailable; candidates must be US work-authorized.
Ignored 2 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): AI agent orchestration, multi-agent orchestration frameworks.
Read the full posting
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