AI Engineer - Unusual Ventures

Unusual Ventures•San Francisco, CA

3d•Onsite

About The Position

Unusual Ventures is seeking its first AI Engineer to develop internal systems that enhance the operational efficiency of its early-stage venture firm. This role involves collaborating across various departments, including investing, talent, platform, founder services, finance, and operations, to identify high-impact problems and create user-friendly tools. The engineer will have significant ownership, setting technical standards, choosing the technology stack, and deciding on development priorities. The position emphasizes solving underlying problems effectively over simply integrating new APIs, offering direct access to partners and operators with a streamlined path from concept to production. Additionally, the role may involve assisting portfolio companies with AI feature scoping, technical approach validation, and internal workflow setup.

Requirements

3-6 years of software engineering experience.
At least 1-2 years of experience shipping LLM-powered products or internal tools to production.
BS or MS in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
Strong Python skills (TypeScript is a plus).
Comfortable across the full stack, including data pipelines, APIs, and simple front ends.
Hands-on experience with LLM APIs, retrieval, agents/tool use, and evaluation.
Product taste: ability to talk to users, identify core problems, ship iteratively, and gather feedback.
Experience working with real-world data (CRMs, email, calendars, third-party data providers).
Clear communication skills to explain technical tradeoffs to non-technical partners.
Self-directed and comfortable setting priorities with minimal direction.

Nice To Haves

Experience building internal tools or intelligence products at a VC firm, investment firm, or data-heavy operations team.
Early-stage startup experience, or experience as a founder.
Familiarity with venture or enterprise software go-to-market strategies.
Experience with recruiting or people data.
Public work (open-source projects, side projects, writing) demonstrating thought process and building skills.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and ship internal tools and systems to support various firm operations.
Develop talent intelligence systems to find, enrich, and rank engineering and GTM talent for portfolio companies.
Create tools for sourcing and research to identify promising companies and founders early.
Build context-aware research assistants to prepare partners for meetings.
Develop workflows to expedite market maps, competitive analysis, customer-call synthesis, and memo drafting.
Make firm knowledge (conversations, memos, playbooks) searchable and accessible.
Automate operations such as portfolio reporting, LP updates, and back-office processes.
Create reusable AI playbooks and tools for founder services teams to deploy across portfolio companies.
Collaborate with founders to scope AI features, pressure-test technical approaches, and stand up internal workflows.