Job Details

Location: San Francisco (hybrid, 3 days/week) or remote within the US

Compensation: $150K–$225K equity

About Quintess.аі

We're supporting a fast-growing AI startup backed by top-tier Silicon Valley investors.

Their mission: build agentic AI systems that eliminate tedious admin work for industrial technicians — starting with a voice AI agent that listens, thinks, and takes action in real time.

The product integrates directly with enterprise maintenance systems (EAM/ERP), helping technicians fix complex assets faster by automating reporting, fault classification, and part ordering.

They're already live with some of the largest global rail operators in the US and Europe — and expanding rapidly.

The Role

We're looking for a Founding AI Engineer who combines deep technical ability with a builder mindset. As one of the first five engineers, you'll shape the company's AI architecture, design and deploy new features, and work directly with customers to solve high-impact real-world problems.

What you'll do:

• Build and adapt real-time AI agents for new customer use cases (often from scratch).

• Design and ship RAG-powered voice flows and conversational features.

• Improve the latency, reliability, and robustness of the real-time AI stack.

• Partner directly with users to understand workflows and iterate fast.

• Turn bespoke builds into reusable platform blueprints for scale.

What We're Looking For

Must-have:

• 4–10 years in AI / backend engineering, ideally in startups or fast-moving environments.

• Strong in Python , LLM integration , and cloud deployment (AWS/GCP).

• Experience building AI agents or real-time systems (speech-to-text, TTS, or streaming).

• Understanding of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and data pipelines.

• Passion for solving real problems — not just training models — and learning from users.

Nice-to-have:

• Prior experience with LangChain, LlamaIndex, or voice orchestration frameworks.

• Experience integrating AI into enterprise systems or industrial environments.

• Early-stage / founding engineer experience.

Why This Role Is Exceptional

• ???? Cutting-edge AI — work at the intersection of voice, reasoning, and real-time execution.

• ????️ 0→1 Impact — shape the product and engineering culture from the ground up.

• ???? Massive market — industrial maintenance is one of the last untouched by AI.

• ???? Live customers, real deployments — this isn't a demo lab; it's production AI.

About the Process

You'll go through a lean, high-signal interview flow designed for builders:

1. Intro Call — with A-Players Recruiting (45 min)

2. Deep-Dive Interview — with the CEO/CTO (60 min)

3. Short Technical Assignment — (~3 hrs, flexible)

4. Final Chat — to align on vision and ownership

???? Apply now if you thrive on building real-time, AI-driven systems that actually do things — not just predict text.