Founding AI Engineer at The Interface – New York, New York

📍 NYC — Open to Relocation💼 Full-time or Contract-to-hire💸 Competitive salary + equity — based on experience
About our CompanyWe’re a small team of engineers, creatives, and researchers building new kinds of interactive experiences powered by AI. We’re launching The Interface: a platform for expressive, real-time characters that people can talk to and explore shared worlds alongside. It’s a mix of entertainment and social.
We just wrapped up YC (S25) and raised a sizeable seed round from top investors. Max (CEO) studied MechE at MIT, previously led AI initiatives at McKinsey; Peyton (CTO) is an MIT CS grad and former quant at Citadel. We’re setting up in NYC — a hacker house-style space — and moving quickly toward launch.
About the RoleWe’re looking for a Founding AI Engineer to build the intelligence layer behind our real-time characters. You’ll be developing low-latency, expressive AI systems — powering voice, personality, and narrative consistency — so that users can have rich, dynamic interactions with characters.
This is a highly creative engineering role: you’ll run experiments across voice models, prompting strategies, and generative systems; help define how characters maintain memory and personality; and ensure everything runs in real time with minimal latency.
What You’ll Do

• Build and optimize real-time voice models and pipelines for natural, low-latency speech
• Develop personality systems, context management, and narrative consistency tools
• Experiment with prompting, fine-tuning, and custom model integration
• Explore generative techniques (e.g. diffusion, multimodal tools) to launch new product features
• Collaborate with rendering engineers to tightly connect voice, visuals, and behavior
• Create metrics and frameworks for evaluating reliability, latency, and engagement
• Prototype and ship AI features directly into the product with fast iteration cycles

You Might Be a Fit If You

• Have 3–6+ years of experience in ML/AI engineering (especially real-time systems)
• Are comfortable with voice models / conversational AI
• Have worked with prompting, fine-tuning, or custom model deployment
• Understand how to balance performance, cost, and latency in production AI systems
• Have experience with generative models (text, voice, image, or multimodal)
• Are excited by fast-paced, hands-on experimentation in new AI applications
• Enjoy building at the intersection of engineering and creativity

Why Join Us

• You’ll be one of the first 5 team members
• You’ll work directly with the founders (MIT backgrounds, bias to action)
• We just raised a sizeable seed round and are backed by top investors
• You’ll own the intelligence layer of our characters and product
• We’re building an entertainment platform and want to have fun doing it
• You’ll help shape the foundation of how AI feels, sounds, and interacts in real time