Founding Engineer - ML Research
About this role
About Us
Deccan AI is a model training and eval startup headquartered in the Bay Area. We are founded by IIT Bombay, IIM Ahmedabad and ex-Google alumni, and work with some of the top AI frontier labs in the world (e.g. Google DeepMind, Snowflake, and many more). We are backed by Prosus Ventures, and our India delivery office is in Hyderabad. Most of our roles are on-site, i.e. Bay Area / Hyderabad.
About the Role
We are looking for a Founding ML Research Engineer to help build and scale our AI research backbone from the ground up. This role sits at the intersection of applied machine learning and systems engineering, ideal for someone who thrives in unstructured environments, loves building fast, and obsesses over model performance and data quality. You will work directly with the founding team to prototype, experiment, and ship research-driven features that push the boundaries of what our AI systems can do.
What You'll Do
- Design, train, and evaluate ML models (LLMs, diffusion models, or domain-specific architectures).
- Develop scalable experimentation pipelines for data, model, and evaluation workflows.
- Work closely with the data and infra teams to optimize training throughput and quality.
- Contribute to open research, internal benchmarks, and emerging techniques in multimodal or generative AI.
- Rapidly prototype and productionize research insights into usable tools and models.
- Define foundational technical culture: set standards for research rigor, documentation, and reproducibility.
What You'll Bring
- 3-10 years of experience in ML research, applied ML, or ML systems engineering.
- Deep familiarity with PyTorch / JAX / TensorFlow, and model architectures (Transformers, Diffusion, or RLHF).
- Strong foundations in data processing, distributed training, and evaluation metrics.
- Curiosity for emerging ML paradigms (multimodality, self-learning, synthetic data, agentic systems, etc.).
- Ability to move from research papers to working prototypes to production-ready code.
- Passion for building from zero to one in a high-velocity startup environment.
Company at a glance
Deccan AI is a Bay Area–based model training and evaluation startup founded by IIT Bombay, IIM Ahmedabad, and Google alumni; it collaborates with Google DeepMind and Snowflake and is backed by Prosus Ventures, with an India delivery office in Hyderabad.
Culture & values
The company collaborates with marketing and product teams to translate growth goals into measurable ML solutions.
The role emphasizes blending data science, machine learning, and growth strategy to drive user acquisition and engagement.
The company experiments with LLMs, recommendation systems, and generative AI for content and outreach.
They establish data-driven frameworks for channel optimization and ROI tracking.
Most roles are on-site in Bay Area or Hyderabad, indicating an in-person work preference.
The environment focuses on automating demand generation workflows and building data pipelines for behavioral analytics, targeting, and experimentation.
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