Founding AI Engineer

NYC - Open to Relocation Full-time or Contract-to-hire Competitive salary equity - based on experience About our Company We're a small team of engineers, creatives, and researchers building new kinds of interactive experiences powered by AI. We're launching The Interface: a platform for expressive, real-time characters that people can talk to and explore shared worlds alongside. It's a mix of entertainment and social. We just wrapped up YC (S25) and raised a sizeable seed round from top investors. Max (CEO) studied MechE at MIT, previously led AI initiatives at McKinsey; Peyton (CTO) is an MIT CS grad and former quant at Citadel. We're setting up in NYC - a hacker house-style space - and moving quickly toward launch. About the Role We're looking for a Founding AI Engineer to build the intelligence layer behind our real-time characters. You'll be developing low-latency, expressive AI systems - powering voice, personality, and narrative consistency - so that users can have rich, dynamic interactions with characters. This is a highly creative engineering role: you'll run experiments across voice models, prompting strategies, and generative systems; help define how characters maintain memory and personality; and ensure everything runs in real time with minimal latency. What You'll Do Build and optimize real-time voice models and pipelines for natural, low-latency speech Develop personality systems, context management, and narrative consistency tools Experiment with prompting, fine-tuning, and custom model integration Explore generative techniques (e.g. diffusion, multimodal tools) to launch new product features Collaborate with rendering engineers to tightly connect voice, visuals, and behavior Create metrics and frameworks for evaluating reliability, latency, and engagement Prototype and ship AI features directly into the product with fast iteration cycles You Might Be a Fit If You Have 3-6 years of experience in ML/AI engineering (especially real-time systems) Are comfortable with voice models / conversational AI Have worked with prompting, fine-tuning, or custom model deployment Understand how to balance performance, cost, and latency in production AI systems Have experience with generative models (text, voice, image, or multimodal) Are excited by fast-paced, hands-on experimentation in new AI applications Enjoy building at the intersection of engineering and creativity Why Join Us You'll be one of the first 5 team members You'll work directly with the founders (MIT backgrounds, bias to action) We just raised a sizeable seed round and are backed by top investors You'll own the intelligence layer of our characters and product We're building an entertainment platform and want to have fun doing it You'll help shape the foundation of how AI feels, sounds, and interacts in real time PIacc874ced9c0-1097

Location: New York, New York, US

Posted Date: 10/25/2025