Founding AI/ML Engineer, Authorization

As the Founding AI/ML Engineer, Authorization, you will lead how Lane decides whether an agent is allowed to do what it’s about to do. A person approves an intent (“book me a flight to Austin under $400”) and the agent takes dozens of actions. Your models decide, at each step, whether the action still matches what was approved, how risky it is, and when to stop and ask. The role starts as an IC leading the modeling, with room to build a team under you. This role is in person at Lane’s San Francisco office, roughly 6 days a week (Sunday through Friday), with flexibility on weekends.

You will directly

• Own the data pipeline and modeling design for Lane’s two main models, including a small language model focused on product and cart context
• Turn a plain-language approval into a checkable authorization envelope: merchants, amounts, items, substitutions, time windows
• Score actions to catch drift, substitutions, prompt injection and over-spend before a payment goes through
• Make risk decisions from agent identity, user history, device and merchant signals: approve, step up, or refuse
• Own evals, labeling and metrics, with false approvals and false blocks tracked as product metrics
• Ship models that run in the purchase path under tight latency and cost budgets