Location: Hybrid – Walnut Creek, CA

We’re a venture-backed startup operating in one of the most critical, yet often overlooked, areas of infrastructure. Our work has direct implications for public health, environmental safety, and the everyday functioning of cities. With access to an enormous trove of complex visual data, we’re building AI systems that can transform how decisions are made in the real world.

This is a true blank canvas opportunity: we’re looking for an AI leader to design and execute the machine learning strategy from the ground up. You’ll shape the research agenda, decide which technical bets to place, and build a small but highly capable team. The focus will be on creating computer vision systems that can interpret real-world data at scale-with the rigor to ensure performance outside the lab.

Your Mission

• Lead & Inspire: Define the AI vision, communicate it clearly, and align the team behind it.

• Curate Excellence: Build a gold-standard, meticulously labeled dataset as the foundation for breakthrough models.

• Research with Purpose: Focus on high-impact problems and balance ambition with feasibility.

• Deliver at Scale: Build pipelines and deploy models that drive measurable real-world results.

• Elevate Standards: Establish best practices for experimentation, data management, and evaluation.

What You Bring

• Proven track record leading AI/ML projects from concept to production.

• Deep expertise in computer vision and large/complex datasets.

• Fluency in modern ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, etc.) and deployment best practices.

• Strong judgment in identifying high-value research directions.

• Comfort operating in an early-stage environment where both speed and quality matter.

Why This Role

• Huge, underserved market with meaningful, real-world impact.

• Complete ownership over AI direction and execution.

• Hybrid role in Walnut Creek, CA with direct access to leadership.

• A rare chance to apply cutting-edge computer vision in a space with minimal competition.

Team & Culture
You’ll join a team that values technical rigor, collaborative problem-solving, and continuous learning. Modern development practices-comprehensive testing, code reviews, and automated deployment pipelines-are core to how we build.

Darwin Recruitment is acting as an Employment Agency in relation to this vacancy.

George Wiles