Senior Machine Learning Engineer (R&D)

About Us Red Cell Partners is an incubation firm building and investing in rapidly scalable technology-led companies that are bringing revolutionary advancements to market in three distinct practice areas: healthcare, cyber, and national security. United by a shared sense of duty and deep belief in the power of innovation, Red Cell is developing powerful tools and solutions to address our Nation’s most pressing problems.

About the Role:

We are seeking a self-starting Full Stack ML Engineer to join our venture studio engineering team. In this role, you will rapidly prototype and develop tools, visualizations, and products that empower researchers and entrepreneurs to build AI-driven startups. This position requires deep expertise in machine learning, proficiency across the full stack, and the ability to work independently in a fast-paced, innovative environment. This is a remote role, with travel expectations to attend our bi-annual All Hands and other travel as needed (~10% or less).

Responsibilities:

• Rapidly prototype and build full-stack tools and visualizations to support researchers and entrepreneurs.
• Design, implement, test, and debug code across front-end, back-end, and data pipelines.
• Collaborate with research teams to translate cutting-edge ML techniques into production-ready solutions.
• Work with entrepreneurs and users to gather requirements, incorporate feedback, and iterate on product development.
• Develop and optimize robust pipelines for model fine-tuning, evaluation, and deployment.
• Establish best practices for reliable and reproducible ML model development.
• Contribute to the creation of scalable, high-performance infrastructure for AI-driven products.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.

5 years of experience in software development (e.g., C++, Python, Rust) with a focus on data structures and algorithms 3 years of experience building production-quality machine learning systems and infrastructure, with deep expertise on data engineering (SQL/Spark)

• Proficiency in JavaScript, React, and other web technologies for front-end development.
• Experience with backend languages (preferably Python or Rust) and system design.

2 years of experience with ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, Ray, MLFlow) and AI accelerators (e.g., GPUs, TPUs).

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master’s degree or PhD in Computer Science or a related technical field.
• Hands-on experience with large language models (LLMs), generative AI, or natural language processing.
• Familiarity with model architectures (e.g., transformers, encoders, decoders) and post-training techniques.
• Experience launching AI-driven products or working with technical customers
• Proficiency in distributed computing, containerizing ML workloads, and debugging complex ML pipelines.
• Familiarity with SEO principles and web accessibility standards.
• Strong interest in AI safety and responsible deployment

2+ years of experience working in an early stage (Seed / Series A) startup

You Might Thrive in This Role If You:

• Are a versatile team player comfortable with ambiguity and rapid iteration.
• Excel at building maintainable backend infrastructure and user-facing products.
• Can balance research exploration with engineering rigor and operational reliability.
• Have a track record of shipping high-quality software under tight deadlines
• Enjoy collaborating across research, engineering, and entrepreneurial teams to drive innovation.

Representative Projects:

Optimizing inference request routing to maximize compute efficiency

• Scoping an AI Agent Architecture to automate a business need or be a part of a new feature for a new incubation we are working on.
• Contributing to new inference features (e.g. structured sampling, fine tuning)
• Supporting inference for new model architectures
• Building a custom BERT model for bespoke classification needs
• Ensuring smooth and regular deployment of inference services
• Analyzing observability data to tune performance based on production workloads

Benefits:

• Career track opportunity with potential for rapid advancement with strong performance as the firm grows.

100% employer paid, comprehensive health care including medical, dental, and vision for you and your family.

• Paid maternity and paternity for 14 weeks at employees' normal pay.
• Unlimited PTO, with management approval.
• Salary Range: $200,000-250,000. This represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience, skills, and other factors.

#LI-RCP We’re an Equal Opportunity Employer: You’ll receive consideration for employment without regard to race, sex, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, or on the basis of disability.