Software Engineer ($150k-$250k + Equity) at Altara

About the role

Join a world-class founding team from SpaceX, Warp, and Jane Street at the intersection of AI and physical science breakthroughs.

Backed by elite investors including Greylock, Neo, Jeff Dean, and leadership from OpenAI and AMD, ensuring high-caliber support and growth.

Work in a high-density, in-person environment in San Francisco where you will directly influence the engineering culture of a category-defining company.

Responsibilities

• Arcitect and build the early-stage foundations of Altara’s core product and infrastructure, balancing rapid shipping with long-term scalability.
• Develop sophisticated data ingestion systems capable of extracting structure from messy, multimodal scientific data like R&D databases and technical documents.
• Design and implement LLM-based agentic systems and advanced AI workflows to help scientists solve complex R&D problems in real-time.

Requirements

• Proven experience shipping 0-to-1 products in high-growth startups, applied AI labs, or top-tier engineering environments like SpaceX or Microsoft.
• Strong background in building production-grade AI/ML applications, specifically LLM-based workflows, search and ranking tools, or computer vision systems.
• Product-first mindset with a bias toward action, capable of navigating unstructured environments and making smart technical tradeoffs to deliver immediate user value.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, or related field.
• Experience with large-scale data processing and machine learning frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or Hugging Face Transformers.
• Knowledge of natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, and/or scientific computing.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to work independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced environment.

Skills

• Expertise in programming languages such as Python, Java, or C++.
• Experience with cloud platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure.
• Understanding of scientific computing libraries such as NumPy, SciPy, or Pandas.
• Experience with data visualization tools like Matplotlib, Seaborn, or Plotly.

Benefits

Altara offers a competitive salary range of $150k-$250k plus equity.

Pay

$150k-$250k + Equity

Schedule

Full-time

Benefits

Health insurance, retirement plans, flexible work arrangements, professional development opportunities, and more.

What You Will Do

Architect and build the early-stage foundations of Altara’s core product and infrastructure, balancing rapid shipping with long-term scalability.

Develop sophisticated data ingestion systems capable of extracting structure from messy, multimodal scientific data like R&D databases and technical documents.

Design and implement LLM-based agentic systems and advanced AI workflows to help scientists solve complex R&D problems in real-time.

The Ideal Candidate

• Proven experience shipping 0-to-1 products in high-growth startups, applied AI labs, or top-tier engineering environments like SpaceX or Microsoft.
• Strong background in building production-grade AI/ML applications, specifically LLM-based workflows, search and ranking tools, or computer vision systems.
• Product-first mindset with a bias toward action, capable of navigating unstructured environments and making smart technical tradeoffs to deliver immediate user value.

Jack & Jill

Jack is an AI that gets to know you on a quick call, learning what you're great at and what you want from your career. Then he helps you land your dream job by finding unmissable opportunities as they come up, supporting you with applications, interview prep, and moral support.

Jill is the AI Recruiter working for the company. She recruits from Jack's network, making an introduction when she spots an excellent candidate.

If it's a match and the company wants to meet you, they'll make the intro. In the meantime, if you'd like, Jack will send you excellent alternatives. We never post fake jobs. This isn't a trick. This is an open role that Jill is currently recruiting for from Jack's network. Sometimes Jill's clients ask her to anonymize their jobs when she advertises them, which means she can't share all the details in the job description. We appreciate this can make them look a bit suspect, but there isn't much we can do about it. Give Jack a spin! You could land this role. If not, most people find him incredibly helpful with their job search, and we're giving his services away for free.