Join the founding team defining the next frontier of marketing. You will bridge cutting-edge NLP research and production engineering, building scalable systems that optimize brand visibility within AI search engines like Perplexity and ChatGPT. Working alongside the pioneers of GEO, you will transform black-box optimization algorithms into high-impact commercial products.
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Founding AI/ML Engineer at Generalcatalyst
Join the pioneers who literally wrote the paper on Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). Backed by General Catalyst and led by a GPT co-creator and Princeton faculty, this founding team is building the infrastructure to help brands navigate the 'black box' of AI search engines. As the first AI/ML Engineer, you’ll bridge the gap between world-class research and production-scale systems, owning the ML architecture for a brand-new category in the marketing stack. If you have deep LLM/NLP expertise and a builder mentality, this is your chance to secure a founding role in San Francisco with exceptional compensation and equity.
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Location
San Francisco, United States
Compensation
$200k-$250k + Equity
Company
Generalcatalyst
About this role
Role overview
About the company
Finance
General Catalyst is a global venture capital and investment firm partnering with entrepreneurs from seed stage to growth, specializing in transformational investments across sectors including technology, healthcare, fintech, and applied artificial intelligence. Founded in 2000, the firm manages $40+ billion assets under management as of June 2025 and has a portfolio of over 800 companies such as Airbnb, Stripe, HubSpot, and Snap. With offices in San Francisco, New York City, Boston, Berlin, Bangalore, and London, General Catalyst collaborates with founders to drive innovation, global resilience, and technology transformation.
What you'll do
What you will do
- Design and build end-to-end ML pipelines including data processing, model training, fine-tuning, and production deployment.
- Translate novel black-box optimization research into production-grade infrastructure capable of serving global enterprise brands.
- Collaborate with the research team to iterate on algorithms that simulate and learn from dynamic AI search engine behaviors.
Who you are
Who this is a fit for
- Strong foundations in NLP and LLMs with hands-on experience training and deploying models beyond simple API integrations.
- Proven track record as a production ML engineer who has shipped scalable systems serving real-world users in a fast-paced environment.
- Research-fluent builder who can engage with complex academic papers while maintaining a relentless focus on shipping production code.
Why this role
Why this role is remarkable
- Work directly with world-class NLP founders including a GPT co-creator from OpenAI and a Princeton Professor with 78k+ citations.
- Enter on the ground floor of a new category (GEO) that solves the "black box" visibility problem for brands in the age of AI search.
- Extremely well-capitalized by top-tier Silicon Valley firms like General Catalyst, offering significant founding equity and $200k-$250k salary.
Jack & Jill
How Jack & Jill work together
I get to know what you’re great at, then find roles you’d never find yourself.Ok, I'll go first. I'm Jack, 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 I help you land your dream job by finding unmissable opportunities as they come up, supporting you with applications, interview prep, and moral support.
I recruit from Jack’s network and make the intro when I spot a great match.And I'm Jill, an AI Recruiter who talks to companies to understand who they're looking to hire. Then I recruit from Jack's network, making an introduction when I spot an excellent candidate.
Jack gets to know what you're great at and what you want next, then searches 15 million jobs daily and helps you discover roles at companies like this.
Meet Jack
What happens next?
Jack’s an AI agent for job searching and career coaching. He works for you.
Jill is the AI recruiter working for the company. She recruits from Jack’s network.
If your profile’s a match and Generalcatalyst wants to meet, Jill will make the intro. In the meantime, Jack will send you excellent alternatives.