Decagon, Fireworks AI, AfterQuery and 5 more AI companies hiring now, with funding, posted pay and Clera data on 542 open AI roles.
Looking for AI companies hiring right now? Start with these eight. Every one has raised a round we could check, and every one has open roles on Clera today, with pay ranges listed below. Best overall: Decagon. Best for infrastructure engineers: Fireworks AI. Best for fast growth: AfterQuery. Best for applied ML on messy data: Reducto. Best for audio and speech: David AI. Best small team with big revenue: Retell AI. Best for AI in science: Edison Scientific. Best for joining at the very start: Judgment Labs.
AI is the biggest hiring category on Clera by a wide margin. On October 19, 2026 we counted 542 open roles at 247 AI companies, more than a quarter of the 2,000+ roles on the platform.
The 8 AI companies hiring at a glance
| Company | Best for | Key stat | One limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decagon | AI agents with real customers | $4.5B valuation (Jan 2026) | Crowded customer support market |
| Fireworks AI | Inference and GPU infrastructure | $250M Series C at $4B (2025) | Competes with the big clouds |
| AfterQuery | Riding a very fast growth curve | $100M+ revenue run rate (Apr 2026) | Training data work can feel like services |
| Reducto | Applied ML on documents | $108M raised, a16z-led Series B | Narrow product focus |
| David AI | Speech and audio data | $50M Series B led by Meritech | Data licensing, not a consumer product |
| Retell AI | Small team, big revenue | ~$60M run rate (Sacra estimate) | Last announced raise was a 2024 seed |
| Edison Scientific | AI for scientific research | $70M seed at $250M | Pharma sales cycles are slow |
| Judgment Labs | Getting in early | $32M seed and Series A (May 2026) | Youngest company here |
How we picked
We started with the 247 AI companies that have open roles on Clera, then sorted by how many roles each had live. To make the list, a company needed at least four open roles on Clera, a funding round reported by a press release, a law firm or a major outlet, and a product we could explain in one sentence. We dropped companies whose latest funding we could only find on job boards or data aggregators. One company with 16 open roles missed the cut for exactly that reason.
The pay ranges come from the salary bands companies posted on their Clera listings this month, lowest to highest across all of their open roles. Rankings reflect funding, momentum and how much you'd learn. They don't reflect employee reviews, so read those yourself. For a city-level view, see our guide to the best cities for AI startup jobs.
1. Decagon
Best for: engineers and operators who want AI agents that real companies already pay for.
Decagon builds AI agents that handle customer support conversations. In January 2026 it raised $250 million at a $4.5 billion valuation, in a round led by Coatue and Index Ventures, according to Bloomberg. It has 11 open roles on Clera, with posted pay from $140,000 to $400,000.
Why it made the list: it's a late-stage agent company that still has 11 roles open across the business, so there's room to own something.
Downside: customer support AI is one of the most crowded corners of the market.
Stage: Series D.
2. Fireworks AI
Best for: infrastructure engineers who want to work on how models actually run.
Fireworks AI runs a platform that serves open models fast and cheap for developers. It raised a $250 million Series C at a $4 billion post-money valuation, led by Lightspeed, Index and Evantic, with Sequoia joining (Orrick). It has 5 open roles on Clera, paying $150,000 to $228,000.
Why it made the list: inference is where AI spend is moving, and this team works on the hard part.
Downside: it competes with hyperscalers that sell the same compute.
Stage: Series C.
3. AfterQuery
Best for: people who want to join a company growing faster than almost anyone.
AfterQuery sells training data, evaluation sets and agent sandboxes to AI labs, built with a network of nearly 100,000 developers, lawyers and other experts. In April 2026 it raised a $30 million Series A at a $300 million valuation led by Altos Ventures, after passing $100 million in annual recurring revenue (SiliconANGLE). It has 21 open roles on Clera, the most of any AI company on the platform, paying $110,000 to $350,000.
Why it made the list: $100 million in revenue at a Series A is rare.
Downside: expert data work leans on operations, so some roles feel closer to services than software.
Stage: Series A.
4. Reducto
Best for: ML engineers who like turning messy real-world documents into clean data.
Reducto builds models that read PDFs, spreadsheets and scans for AI apps. In October 2025 it raised a $75 million Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz, bringing total funding to $108 million (Reducto). It has 6 open roles on Clera, paying $150,000 to $325,000.
Why it made the list: document parsing sounds boring and turns out to be a hard, valuable ML problem that labs and legal AI companies rely on.
Downside: one core product means less room to switch problems inside the company.
Stage: Series B.
5. David AI
Best for: researchers and engineers who care about speech, accents and tone.
David AI builds and licenses audio datasets that teach models how people actually talk. It raised a $50 million Series B led by Meritech, with NVIDIA joining (Gunderson Dettmer). It has 7 open roles on Clera, paying $125,000 to $315,000.
Why it made the list: voice is the next big interface, and good audio data is scarce.
Downside: it sells data to other AI companies, so your work ships inside someone else's product.
Stage: Series B.
6. Retell AI
Best for: engineers who want a lot of ownership on a small team.
Retell AI builds voice agents that answer and make phone calls for businesses. Its last announced raise was a $4.6 million seed led by Alt Capital in 2024 (Retell AI). Research firm Sacra estimates it reached about $60 million in annualized revenue by April 2026. Its 6 open roles on Clera include forward deployed and solutions engineering, paying $180,000 to $300,000.
Why it made the list: a tiny funding total next to large revenue means a lean team where each hire matters.
Downside: the revenue figure is an outside estimate, not a company disclosure.
Stage: seed (last announced round).
7. Edison Scientific
Best for: people who want AI to speed up real scientific research.
Edison Scientific is the commercial spinout of the nonprofit lab FutureHouse, and it builds Kosmos, an AI scientist that runs many research tasks in parallel. It raised a $70 million seed at a $250 million valuation, led by Spark Capital and Triatomic Capital (Edison Scientific, Caproasia). It has 4 open roles on Clera, paying $175,000 to $350,000.
Why it made the list: it pairs a research lab's depth with a company's urgency.
Downside: pharma customers buy slowly, so revenue may lag the science.
Stage: seed.
8. Judgment Labs
Best for: engineers who want to join a company very early.
Judgment Labs builds tools that trace and evaluate AI agents across long, multi-step tasks, including the open-source Judgeval SDK. On May 12, 2026 it announced $32 million across its seed and Series A, both led by Lightspeed (Pulse 2.0). It has 4 open roles on Clera, paying $150,000 to $450,000.
Why it made the list: the funding is going mostly to research and engineering hires in San Francisco.
Downside: it's the youngest company here, with the least track record.
Stage: Series A.
What Clera's data says about AI hiring
These numbers come from every open role on Clera on October 19, 2026:
- 542 open AI roles at 247 companies. AI is the single largest industry on Clera, well ahead of SaaS at 220 roles.
- $200,000 median pay. Across the 483 AI roles that post a salary band, the median midpoint is $200,000.
- The Bay Area still dominates. Of the AI companies that list an office, 74 are in the Bay Area and 31 are in New York. Our list of the best startups to work for in NYC covers the New York side.
How to choose
- If you want the safest bet, pick a company with a large recent round, like Decagon or Fireworks AI.
- If you want the most equity upside, pick an earlier company like Judgment Labs or Edison Scientific, and ask hard questions about runway.
- If you're not an ML researcher, look at forward deployed, solutions and operations roles. Retell AI and AfterQuery both hire for them.
- If pay matters most, compare posted bands, then read our guide on negotiating your first salary at an AI startup.
Frequently Asked Questions
On Clera, AfterQuery has the most open AI roles, with 21 as of October 19, 2026. Elise, Basis and Decagon each have between 11 and 13. Across the whole platform there are 542 open AI roles at 247 companies, so the list above is a starting point, not the full set.
No. Most open roles at AI startups are software, product, sales and operations jobs. Research scientist roles often ask for a PhD or published work, but engineering roles usually care more about what you've built. Forward deployed engineering is a common way in for strong generalists.
On Clera, the median midpoint of posted salary bands for AI roles is $200,000, across 483 roles with a listed band. Ranges on this list run from $110,000 at the low end to $450,000 at the top, before equity. Senior and founding roles sit at the upper end.
Some, but fewer than you might expect. Most of the AI roles on Clera that state a work policy are on-site. Teams building agents and models tend to want people in the same room, usually in San Francisco or New York. If remote matters, filter for it first.
Apply where the company can see your work: a GitHub project, a short write-up, or a demo. Warm intros help most. Our guide on landing a job at an AI startup without a recruiter walks through it step by step.
Sources
- Bloomberg: Decagon valued at $4.5 billion
- Orrick: Fireworks AI $250M Series C
- SiliconANGLE: AfterQuery $30M Series A
- Reducto: Series B announcement
- Gunderson Dettmer: David AI $50M Series B
- Retell AI: seed announcement and Sacra revenue estimate
- Edison Scientific: $70M seed and Caproasia on the $250M valuation
- Pulse 2.0: Judgment Labs $32M
- Clera job data, all open roles on October 19, 2026
Get these companies to come to you
Applying to eight AI companies one by one takes weeks. Join Clera once, and the startups hiring for your skills bid on you, with a warm intro to the team when there's a match.
