Principal AI Engineer

Overview

We're looking for a full-time Principal AI Engineer to join us in our mission of bringing the ION Factory OS to next-generation hardware builders around the globe. Our newest team member will join First Resonance in Los Angeles, CA (HQ in Downtown).

Are you excited by the opportunity to assist manufacturers working on eVTOLs, rockets, robots, and autonomous vehicles? The most important characteristic of our AI team is their passion for creating impactful, innovative solutions for companies tackling society’s greatest challenges, such as climate change, space exploration, and autonomous transportation.

With this role, you’ll join a diverse team with a wide range of expertise in AI, manufacturing, and cutting-edge technology. We pride ourselves on being fast learners, creative thinkers, and agile executors. While a spur-of-the-moment ping pong tournament is occasionally required, our number one priority is always assisting our ION customers with our manufacturing platform. If you want to play a key role in shaping the future of hardware and Industry 4.0 through AI innovation, we’d love to meet you!

Responsibilities & Duties 

• Design, implement, and optimize AI models and pipelines for solving complex manufacturing challenges.

• Build and maintain AI/ML infrastructure to support model development, training, deployment, and monitoring at scale (MLOps).

• Develop solutions for generative AI use cases, including autonomous procedure generation, anomaly detection, and quality recommendations.

• Collaborate with data engineering teams to preprocess and transform structured and unstructured data for model training and evaluation.

• Integrate AI-driven insights and recommendations into customer-facing products, such as ION Analytics and Autoplan.

• Research and implement the latest advancements in machine learning, deep learning, and generative AI to improve product capabilities.

• Partner with DevOps to ensure reliability and scalability of AI systems in production, including CI/CD pipelines for models.

• Leverage cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, or GCP) for scalable deployment and management of AI/ML workflows.

• Work directly with customers to understand their needs and translate business challenges into AI-driven solutions.

Minimum Qualifications & Skills

• 5+ years of experience in AI/ML engineering, with a proven track record of delivering impactful AI solutions.

• Proficiency in Python, with expertise in AI/ML frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or Scikit-learn.

• Experience designing and deploying AI/ML pipelines with tools like Airflow, Dagster, or equivalent.

• Hands-on experience with MLOps tools such as MLflow, Kubeflow, or SageMaker.

• Strong understanding of data preprocessing, feature engineering, and model evaluation techniques.

• Familiarity with generative AI models (e.g., LLMs, GANs) and their applications.

• Deep expertise in leveraging cloud services (e.g., AWS SageMaker, Azure OpenAI Studio, etc ) for building AI solutions.

• Solid knowledge of APIs (including REST and GraphQL) for integrating AI models into applications.

• Experience with analytics platforms (e.g., Snowflake, BigQuery) for managing training data and real-time predictions.

• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to translate business needs into AI solutions.

• Familiarity with compliance standards (e.g., SOC2, GDPR) and ethical AI principles.

• Experience handling sensitive information (PII, ITAR, etc) in deploying AI technologies and solutions.

Desired Qualifications:

• Expertise in natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision applications.

• Experience with edge AI deployment for real-time, low-latency applications.

• Familiarity with data governance frameworks and best practices.

• Proficiency in data visualization tools (e.g., Sigma Computing, Tableau) to present AI-driven insights.

• Experience working with open-source data formats like Parquet or Delta Lake.

• Customer-facing experience with AI solutions, including gathering requirements and communicating value.

• Contributions to open-source projects or published research in AI/ML.

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.

First Resonance is an equal opportunity employer dedicated to building an inclusive and diverse workforce. 

First Resonance participates in E-Verify. As part of our onboarding process, a new hire's Form I-9 information will be shared with the federal government to confirm they are authorized to work in the U.S.

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. Certain roles may be eligible for incentive compensation, equity and benefits. 

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.