ML Engineering Lead

Saris AI • San Francisco, CA

6h

About The Position

Saris AI is a San Francisco, Montreal, and Toronto-based applied AI startup focused on building the future of work in the banking industry. They are addressing a significant market problem, experiencing rapid growth, and pushing the boundaries of multi-turn AI agentic systems. Their mission is to tackle complex automation problems that require long-context reasoning, tool orchestration across legacy systems, and strict compliance, especially those without predefined solutions. Saris AI has successfully deployed real agents handling customer workflows in production and is rapidly scaling its operations. The company is seeking a hands-on ML Engineering Lead for its core engineering team, someone who thrives in early-stage, ambiguous environments, has experience leading ML systems from initial development to scale, and is adept at defining both technical direction and the underlying systems.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in ML/AI engineering, including time as a technical lead or manager
• Proven track record of leading ML initiatives end-to-end, from problem definition production deployment
• Deep experience with LLMs and/or agentic systems, ideally in real-world, customer-facing applications
• Strong understanding of ML fundamentals (deep learning, transformers, model evaluation, tradeoffs)
• Experience scaling ML systems in production, including monitoring, iteration, and reliability
• Demonstrated ability to lead engineers, influence architecture decisions, and drive technical direction
• Comfortable operating in early-stage, ambiguous environments with high ownership
• Strong communication skills with the ability to translate complex ML concepts into clear decisions

Nice To Haves

• Have experience building agentic systems, orchestration layers, or long-context reasoning systems
• Are comfortable across the stack (data modeling infra APIs)
• Have worked with both open-source and closed LLMs, including fine-tuning or retrieval systems (RAG)
• Have a strong product mindset and care deeply about real-world impact, not just model performance

Responsibilities

• Own and lead the ML/AI function end-to-end, setting technical direction and standards across the company
• Architect and guide the development of multi-modal, agentic AI systems powering real-world workflows
• Define and oversee evaluation frameworks, datasets, and performance metrics to continuously improve agent quality
• Drive productionization of ML systems, ensuring reliability, scalability, and compliance in real-world environments
• Build and mentor a high-performing ML team over time, setting best practices across modeling, experimentation, and deployment

Benefits

• Competitive compensation with premium benefits and equity package.
• Work with a stellar team of engineers, builders, and leaders; including repeat YC founders with a successful exit (Ready Education).
• We already have production agents live with revenue-generating customers
• Our team is backed by Tier 1 Silicon Valley VCs

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed