Founding AI Engineer

Founding AI Engineer at Alinea | Y Combinator's Work at a Startup Work at a StartupStartup JobsInternshipsUpcoming EventsHow it WorksLog InFounding AI Engineer at Alinea (W21)$160K - $200KAutomated investing for the next generation 💸New York, NY, USFull-timeWill sponsorAny (new grads ok)Apply nowAbout Alinea Alinea is an investing app for GenZs. We're a Y Combinator backed start-up and have raised $5.5M from top investors including Goodwater Capital, F7 Ventures, and GFR. We are looking to build out a team of passionate and driven individuals who want to make an impact. Come join us! About the roleFounding AI Engineer Location: New York, NY (Hybrid – 4 days in office) Company: Alinea Invest Alinea is building the investing platform for the next generation. • Post-Series A • 2.5M+ downloads • 200K+ funded accounts We're hiring a Founding AI Engineer to lead the development of AI systems powering the next generation of intelligent financial tools at Alinea. You will own and evolve AI Allie, our in-app AI investing companion, and help shape how AI is integrated across the entire Alinea platform. This role sits at the intersection of large language models, financial data, and product experience. You'll build systems that help users learn about investing, make decisions, and engage more deeply with their finances. What You'll Do • Own the architecture and development of AI systems powering AI Allie • Build and ship LLM-powered product features used by hundreds of thousands of users • Design retrieval systems that ground model responses in financial data and internal knowledge • Develop evaluation frameworks to measure model quality, reasoning accuracy, and safety • Improve model performance, latency, and cost efficiency in production • Build infrastructure for prompt orchestration, memory, and contextual personalization • Design guardrails appropriate for financial products and regulated environments • Rapidly prototype and ship new AI-driven product capabilities What We're Looking For • 3+ years of experience building production software systems • Experience building and shipping LLM-powered applications • Strong understanding of prompt design, model behavior, and evaluation techniques • Experience building RAG systems, embeddings pipelines, or retrieval architectures • Strong backend engineering skills (APIs, data pipelines, system design) • Ability to move quickly from prototype to production • Strong product intuition and desire to build user-facing AI experiences Nice to Have • Experience building AI features in consumer products • Experience working with financial or structured data • Experience optimizing model cost and latency at scale • Experience with fine-tuning, evaluation pipelines, or model experimentation Working at Alinea • Hybrid work environment: 4 days per week in our New York office • Work directly with the founding team • High ownership and the opportunity to shape AI at a rapidly growing fintech company Technology • iOS Swift • Next.js + Typescript 4 + Node.js(Express) + Firebase + Socket.io + Redux • MongoDB + AWS(EB, EC2, CloudWatch, CodeDeploy) • Swift 5 + Programmatic UI + MVVM-C Architecture Apply nowOther jobs at AlineaSoftware Engineer, Reliability & Platform (Fintech)fulltimeNew York, NY, USFull stack$160K - $200KAny (new grads ok)ApplyFounding AI EngineerfulltimeNew York, NY, USFull stack$160K - $200KAny (new grads ok)ApplyFull Stack iOS Software EngineerfulltimeNew York, NY, USFull stack$125K - $185K0.10% - 0.30%3+ yearsApplyHundreds of YC startups are hiring on Work at a Startup. Sign up to see more ›Work at a StartupJobsInternshipsEventsHow it worksSign inY CombinatorAbout YCPressPrivacy & TermsContactJobs by RoleSoftware Engineer JobsDesign & UI/UX JobsProduct Manager JobsSales JobsMarketing JobsSupport JobsOperations JobsJobs by LocationSoftware Engineer Jobs in San FranciscoProduct Manager Jobs in San FranciscoSoftware Engineer Jobs in New YorkProduct Manager Jobs in New YorkSoftware Engineer Jobs in Los AngelesProduct Manager Jobs in Los AngelesRemote JobsRemote Software Engineer JobsRemote Design & UI/UX JobsRemote Product Manager JobsRemote Sales JobsRemote Marketing JobsRemote Support JobsRemote Operations Jobs