Founding Lead Machine Learning Engineer

TRANSFORM LANGUAGE MODELS INTO REAL-WORLD, HIGH-IMPACT PRODUCT EXPERIENCES. A1 is a self-funded AI group, operating in full stealth. We’re building a new global consumer AI application focused on an important but underexplored use case. You will shape the core technical direction of A1 - model selection, training strategy, infrastructure, and long-term architecture. This is a founding technical role: your decisions will define our model stack, our data strategy, and our product capabilities for years ahead. You won’t just fine-tune models - you’ll design systems: training pipelines, evaluation frameworks, inference stacks, and scalable deployment architectures. You will have full autonomy to experiment with frontier models (LLaMA, Mistral, Qwen, Claude-compatible architectures) and build new approaches where existing ones fall short. WHY THIS ROLE MATTERS - You are creating the intelligence layer of A1’s first product, defining how it understands, reasons, and interacts with users. - Your decisions shape our entire technical foundation — model architectures, training pipelines, inference systems, and long-term scalability. - You will push beyond typical chatbot use cases, working on a problem space that requires original thinking, experimentation, and contrarian insight. - You influence not just how the product works, but what it becomes, helping steer the direction of our earliest use cases. - You are joining as a founding builder, setting engineering standards, contributing to culture, and helping create one of the most meaningful AI applications of this wave. WHAT YOU’LL DO - Build end-to-end training pipelines: data → training → eval → inference - Design new model architectures or adapt open-source frontier models - Fine-tune models using state-of-the-art methods (LoRA/QLoRA, SFT, DPO, distillation) - Architect scalable inference systems using vLLM / TensorRT-LLM / DeepSpeed - Build data systems for high-quality synthetic and real-world training data - Develop alignment, safety, and guardrail strategies - Design evaluation frameworks across performance, robustness, safety, and bias - Own deployment: GPU optimization, latency reduction, scaling policies - Shape early product direction, experiment with new use cases, and build AI-powered experiences from zero - Explore frontier techniques: retrieval-augmented training, mixture-of-experts, distillation, multi-agent orchestration, multimodal models WHAT IT’S LIKE TO WORK HERE - You take ownership - you solve problems end-to-end rather than wait for perfect instructions - You learn through action - prototype → test → iterate → ship - You’re calm in ambiguity - zero-to-one building energises you - You bias toward speed with discipline - V1 now > perfect later - You see failures and feedback as essential to growth - You work with humility, curiosity, and a founder’s mindset - You lift the bar for yourself and your teammates every day REQUIREMENTS - Strong background in deep learning and transformer architectures - Hands-on experience training or fine-tuning large models (LLMs or vision models) - Proficiency with PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow - Experience with distributed training frameworks (DeepSpeed, FSDP, Megatron, ZeRO, Ray) - Strong software engineering skills — writing robust, production-grade systems - Experience with GPU optimization: memory efficiency, quantization, mixed precision - Comfortable owning ambiguous, zero-to-one technical problems end-to-end NICE TO HAVE - Experience with LLM inference frameworks (vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, FasterTransformer) - Contributions to open-source ML libraries - Background in scientific computing, compilers, or GPU kernels - Experience with RLHF pipelines (PPO, DPO, ORPO) - Experience training or deploying multimodal or diffusion models - Experience in large-scale data processing (Apache Arrow, Spark, Ray) - Prior work in a research lab (Google Brain, DeepMind, FAIR, Anthropic, OpenAI) WHAT YOU’LL GET - Extreme ownership and autonomy from day one - you define and build key model systems. - Founding-level influence over technical direction, model architecture, and product strategy. - Remote-first flexibility - High-impact scope—your work becomes core infrastructure of a global consumer AI product. - Competitive compensation and performance-based bonuses - Backing of a profitable US$2B group, with the speed of a startup - Insurance coverage, flexible time off, and global travel insurance - Opportunity to shape a new global AI product from zero - A small, senior, high-performance team where you collaborate directly with founders and influence every major decision. OUR TEAM & CULTURE We operate as a dense, senior, high-performance team. We value clarity, speed, craftsmanship, and relentless ownership. We behave like founders — we build, ship, iterate, and hold ourselves to a high technical bar. If you value excellence, enjoy building real systems, and want to be part of a small team creating something globally impactful, you’ll thrive here. ABOUT A1 A1 is a self-funded, independent AI group backed by BJAK, focused on building a new consumer AI product with global impact. We’re assembling a small, elite team of ML and engineering builders who want to work on meaningful, high-impact problems.