Engineer in Residence: Research Coach

What You'll Build

• A guided workflow for question refinement, source review, note-taking, drafting support, and rubric-aware feedback.
• Citation verification grounded in real scholarly sources rather than generic model claims.
• A transparent authorship log that distinguishes student-written work from AI scaffolding or suggestions.
• Optional sandboxed experimentation or code execution where computational work is part of the research process.

What You'll Do

• Own the user journey from early research question to draft refinement and evidence review.
• Design guardrails that enforce coaching behavior instead of drifting into ghostwriting.
• Build multi-step agentic workflows with strong traceability, citation grounding, and failure handling.
• Talk to students, parents, or educators to learn where the process helps versus harms.
• Work with AI Fund's build team on product positioning, pedagogy, and technical tradeoffs.

What You Need

• Strong full-stack engineering ability and real hands-on experience shipping multi-step GenAI systems.
• Experience with citation grounding, retrieval, agent orchestration, evals, or developer-tool style workflows.
• Product judgment around trust, educational integrity, and how much help a student should receive.
• A bias toward clear UX for complex workflows rather than impressive but brittle demos.
• You know how to use AI coding assistants and modern AI tools to increase speed without surrendering product judgment.
• US work authorization. We are unable to sponsor visas for this role.

Helpful But Not Required

• Edtech experience or a personal connection to research education.
• Experience building code sandboxes, notebook-style tools, or pedagogy-heavy products.
• Experience with LangGraph, Claude Agent SDK, or similar workflow tooling.

Who This Is For

A builder who cares about teaching and believes AI should make students stronger thinkers, not better cheaters. Someone who wants a product problem that combines deep workflow design, safety, and clear commercial demand.

What To Know Upfront

• This is a 12-week, full-time, on-site residency in Mountain View, California.
• Not every residency becomes a company. The goal is to pressure-test the idea quickly and honestly with real users and customers.
• You will be building an AI Fund idea, not bringing your own startup idea into the program.
• The process typically includes a Builder Event or equivalent working conversation, then a 48-hour Builder Challenge, then panel review with AI Fund build leadership.
• The compensation is intentionally modest during the residency because the upside, if the idea works, is a founder-level role.

Compensation

• $10,000/month for 12 weeks ($30,000 total). This is a contract role during the residency.
• If the build leads to a funded company, the next step is a founder-level role with meaningful equity upside.

Schedule & Location

• This is a 12-week, on-site residency in Mountain View, CA ($10K/month).
• We are only considering candidates within commuting distance from Mountain View.