Founding Gen AI Engineer

Company Description

Foothill Ventures is a technology-focused venture fund based in Los Altos, California. We make pre-seed, seed (preferred), and A-round investments in startups across software, life science, and deep tech. We grew out of the TEEC Angel Fund, which made seed-stage, highly successful bets on companies like Zoom Communications, Carta, Plus.ai, WeRide.ai and Ginkgo Bioworks, all subsequent Unicorns.

We provide support to our portfolio companies in various areas, including recruiting and talent acquisition. This role is posted on our website for our portfolio companies.

Job Description

About our portfolio company ResiQuant: 

At ResiQuant, we're tackling one of the biggest challenges in disaster resilience: the lack of accurate, standardized, and dynamic property data. In a world increasingly impacted by climate change and natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, and wildfires, decisions about risk are often made with incomplete or incorrect information.

Our mission is to empower insurers, financial institutions, and asset managers with AI systems fused with structural engineering expertise. These systems bridge critical data gaps to deliver precise, actionable building insights for better decision-making.

Founded by Stanford PhDs, we are committed to leveraging cutting-edge AI to protect communities and businesses from disaster impacts. At ResiQuant, we're building a future where every organization has access to world-class property risk intelligence to drive resilience and safeguard what matters most.

Qualifications

We're seeking a visionary Founding Generative AI Engineer who is passionate about our mission and ready to architect the future of AI-driven disaster resilience. As a founding team member, you'll be responsible for designing and building comprehensive AI systems that seamlessly integrate human expertise with cutting-
edge machine intelligence.

This role demands someone with a scrappy, hands-on approach who can evolve alongside our team through all stages of growth. You'll be instrumental in establishing our technical culture, architectural decisions, and AI strategy while building scalable systems that solve real-world problems at the intersection of structural engineering and artificial intelligence.

Start date: Immediate

Responsibilities:

• Technical Leadership: Drive the development and deployment of cutting-edge computer vision and vision-language models, ensuring alignment with company goals and industry best practices.
• Team Management: Lead a team of engineers, fostering a collaborative and innovative culture, setting clear goals, and ensuring high-quality deliverables.
• R&D and Innovation: Stay updated with the latest research in vision and vision-language models,
• identifying and integrating new techniques and technologies to maintain a competitive edge.
• Model Optimization: Ensure models are efficient, scalable, and optimized for performance across various applications and platforms.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with the founders, product managers, data scientists, and other members of the team to align model development with business objectives and product requirements.

Qualifications:

• Master's or Ph.D. in Computer Science, AI, or a related field with a specialization in computer
• vision, NLP, or machine learning.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience in computer vision and vision-language models.
• Deep expertise in LLM applications, human-AI collaboration, and MLOps at scale
• Experience leading a team of engineers, with a track record of delivering successful AI projects
• that involve fine-tunning, training, and deploying LLMs.
• Expertise designing and implementing machine learning architectures using frameworks like
• TensorFlow, PyTorch, or similar.

Technical Skills we're looking for:

• Strong knowledge of computer vision algorithms, vision-language integration, and multimodal AI models.
• Proficiency in Python and experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) for model deployment.
• Familiarity with image processing libraries, NLP libraries, and LLMs (both, open source and commercial).

What drives us:

• Impact: we are driven by a shared mission to address a paramount challenge of our time
• Resolve: we believe that hard work and resilience yield extraordinary outcomes
• Urgency: we are motivated to outpace rapid urbanization and escalating disaster impacts

Why Join ResiQuant:

• Founding Impact: Opportunity to be a founding team member and architect the technical foundation of a company disrupting the $200B property insurance industry
• Technical Innovation: Build cutting-edge AI systems at the intersection of structural engineering, climate science, and financial risk
• Real-World Impact: Experience firsthand how your AI systems protect communities and businesses from disaster impacts
• Culture Building: Help establish the technical culture and engineering practices for a world-class AI company

Day to day:

• AI System Architecture: Design and implement comprehensive LLM/VLM applications with human-in-the-loop workflows
• Advanced MLOps: Build, deploy, and continuously optimize sophisticated AI systems with automated feedback loops
• Agent Orchestration: Develop and maintain complex multi-agent systems for property risk assessment
• Technical Leadership: Guide architectural decisions, mentor team members, and drive technical innovation
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Work closely with domain experts, product teams, and stakeholders to ensure AI solutions meet real-world needs
• Research & Development: Prototype novel approaches and integrate cutting-edge AI research into production systems

What we offer:

• Competitive Compensation: Salary commensurate with experience and founding team equity
• Founding Team Equity: Significant equity stake as a founding member with substantial upside potential
• Premium Benefits: Comprehensive health insurance, 401(k) with company matching
• Innovation Environment: Vibrant tech startup culture with access to cutting-edge technology and research
• Mission-Driven Work: Opportunity to work on technology that makes a meaningful difference in disaster resilience

The base salary range for this position is $200,000–$220,000 per year, depending on experience and qualifications. Additionally, this role includes an equity component as part of the total compensation package, reflecting the early-stage nature of our company.

Additional Information

Foothill Ventures is an equal opportunity employer. All aspects of employment including the decision to hire, promote, discipline, or discharge, will be based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical​​​ condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or ​expression, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state, or local law.