Founding Lead AI Engineer

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.

About our portfolio company ResiQuant: 

Across the globe, rapid urbanization and escalating climate change impacts are driving skyrocketing risks from disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, and wildfires—yet exposed building inventories are unstandardized, static, and incomplete, preventing decision making across verticals, from public policy to real estate transactions. Decision today is made with incomplete and even wrong property information.

At ResiQuant, we're on a mission to empower insurers, financial institutions, and asset managers with AI systems trained on structural engineering domain knowledge that can fill in the gaps and provide engineering-relevant building characteristics.

Founded by Stanford PhDs, ResiQuant is driven by an unwavering commitment to protect communities and businesses from the devastating impacts of disasters. We believe that every organization deserves access to best-in-class property risk intelligence to build resilience against the storms to come—and we won't stop until this is the norm, not the exception.

As the Founding Lead AI Engineer in Computer Vision and Vision-Language Models, you work closely with the founders to design, develop, and deploy advanced AI models that harness the power of computer vision and vision-language capabilities to analyze building data through the lenses of a domain expert. You will lead and mentor a team of engineers, collaborating closely to drive innovations in AI, optimize model performance, and deliver robust, scalable solutions. This role requires a blend of technical expertise, hands-on leadership, and a strong desire to work hard and thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.

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 4 years of experience in computer vision and vision-language models.
• 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 RQ:

• Opportunity to be involved in a seed-stage startup and contribute to the culture you want to see.
• Chance to pioneer and disrupt one of the world's largest industries.
• Experience firsthand the tangible impact of what you build.

Day to day:

• Research and deploy architectures for AI systems trained on structural engineering and disaster risk domain expertise for classification tasks.
• Participate in product ideation and development.
• Interface with product managers, software development, and AI team to understand product goals and data needs.
• Write, test, document, and review code according to RQ’s development standards that you would help define.

What we offer:

• Competitive salary commensurate with experience
• Equity in the company as an seed-stage member
• Vibrant tech startup environment
• Competitive company 401(k) program with company matching
• Health insurance
• Working on the challenge of our generation with other passionate people

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.