Senior AI Engineer

Overview

We’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer with a passion for AI to join us in our mission of bringing the ION Factory OS to next-generation hardware builders around the globe. This role is based in Los Angeles, CA (HQ in El Segundo).

Are you excited by the opportunity to build AI-powered software that accelerates the development of eVTOLs, rockets, robots, and autonomous vehicles?

Responsibilities & Duties

• Lead the design, implementation, and optimization of production-ready AI systems within the ION Factory OS.
• Ship customer-facing features that directly impact manufacturing workflows, including AI-driven functionality (e.g., generative procedure creation, anomaly detection, recommendations) and core product features not reliant on AI.
• Architect and maintain scalable software systems, including AI/ML pipelines and broader product infrastructure.
• Design and implement AI features using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines to deliver context-aware insights and recommendations.
• Leverage Model Context Protocol (MCP) and similar frameworks to connect AI models seamlessly with structured/unstructured data sources and external tools.
• Collaborate with product managers and customers to translate real-world challenges into robust software solutions.
• Partner with data engineering to process and transform structured and unstructured manufacturing data into usable formats.
• Ensure reliability, scalability, and maintainability of all systems in production, leveraging CI/CD and cloud-native workflows.
• Stay ahead of advancements in software engineering and AI, bringing the best practices into shipped product features.
• Mentor junior engineers and help raise the technical bar across the team.

Minimum Qualifications & Skills

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 3+ years shipping AI/ML-powered products into production.
• Proven track record of building and shipping customer-facing applications (AI and non-AI) that deliver measurable business value.
• Experience architecting scalable systems on cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Expertise in data modeling, preprocessing, and model evaluation at scale.
• Familiarity with generative AI models (LLMs, diffusion models, GANs) and their real-world applications.
• Strong knowledge of APIs and modern software design patterns for integrating AI into SaaS products.
• Excellent problem-solving, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Passion for AI innovation paired with the ability to deliver non-AI product functionality when needed.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience building AI systems for real-time, low-latency, or edge deployments.
• Familiarity with modern data governance, privacy, and compliance standards (SOC2, GDPR, ITAR).
• Hands-on experience with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) for building AI systems that combine large language models with external knowledge sources.
• Understanding of and/or experience with Model Context Protocol (MCP) or similar emerging standards for connecting AI systems with data and tools.
• Customer-facing experience gathering requirements, presenting solutions, and demonstrating value.
• Contributions to open-source projects or published research in applied AI/ML.
• Experience mentoring engineers and contributing to engineering best practices.

Benefits & Perks

• Health Insurance; medical, vision, dental, & life insurance.
• Paid Parental Leave.
• Employee Stock Option Plan.
• Team outings, group lunches, open office, happy hours.
• Paid holidays, sick days.
• Flexible Friday and PTO.
• 401K.

• Pay is based on factors such as (but not limited to) scope and responsibilities of the position, candidate's work experience and skillset, and location.
• First Resonance accelerates the speed and reliability of hardware development for companies manufacturing the next generation of hardware products. This includes space exploration, electric airplanes, autonomous vehicles, nuclear reactors, robotics, and more.
• We are a group of software, hardware, and manufacturing engineers that are bringing the best of modern UX and data science to an industry that has been overly rigid in its innovation.

We are removing the barriers preventing radical advancement by providing tools to manufacturing engineers and operators to move information more freely, collaborate with their teams more easily, and use the power of data to predict problems and provide insights that result in better hardware quality and delivery.