Clera Founding Engineer (AI/ML) at Clera builds AI/ML systems for a consumer social platform using AI agents to facilitate real-world social connections. The role owns AI matching, social graphs, and AI agent communication workflows.
Responsibilities
A fast-growing, AI-first consumer social platform is hiring a Founding AI Engineer to join its core team in San Francisco. The company uses AI agents to facilitate real-world, in-person social connections — organizing curated small-group hangouts for young people, with a growing presence across university campuses in the US. The platform operates entirely through AI: matching, logistics, reminders, follow-ups, and continuous learning, all without a traditional app.
As a founding engineer, you will own two mission-critical pillars of the product and have an outsized impact on the direction of the technology.
AI Matching & Social Graphs
Build a new type of social graph grounded in real-world interaction data
Match people into highly compatible groups and surface patterns that drive meaningful friendships
Work with millions of data points using collaborative filtering and graph intelligence
Develop and iterate on embeddings, ranking systems, and large-scale personalization
Apply reinforcement learning informed by real-world outcomes
Communication Workflows & AI Agent Experience
Design and build AI agent experiences across channels where users already are (e.g. Instagram, iMessage, WhatsApp, TikTok)
Orchestrate multi-channel agent workflows connecting APIs, third-party services, and the database layer
Build scalable infrastructure to support complex, multi-step AI workflows
Qualification
Founding mindsetExperience with recommendation systems
Required
4–10+ years of experience building AI/ML systems in production
Comfort working across the full stack — from data pipelines to user-facing agent interactions
Familiarity with multi-channel messaging APIs and agent frameworks
Founding mindset: you ship fast, own problems end-to-end, and thrive in ambiguity
Preferred
Experience with recommendation systems, social graphs, or large-scale personalization
