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Founding Applied AI Engineer

New Quest AI, Inc.

Job Overview

Location

Remote

Job Type

Full-time

Full Job Description

📋 Description

• We are seeking three Founding Applied AI Engineers to join New Quest Ai, a groundbreaking startup poised to redefine personal growth through artificial intelligence. We've recently secured $6 million in pre-seed funding and are on a mission to build an AI mentor that deeply understands individuals and actively guides them toward self-improvement. This isn't about creating another chatbot or a simple digital assistant; it's about developing a sophisticated AI that observes, learns, and intervenes proactively to foster genuine personal development. Our vision is to create an AI that builds a profound psychological profile of its user, leveraging their digital footprint to provide tailored guidance and support.
• As a Founding Engineer, you will be instrumental in shaping the core technology and architecture of our AI mentor. You will tackle complex, unsolved technical challenges at the forefront of applied AI. This includes developing a sophisticated psychological profiling engine capable of understanding users from their emails, calendars, messages, and behavioral patterns – going beyond mere data extraction to achieve genuine human understanding. You will architect and implement a novel memory system that compounds over time, moving beyond the limitations of finite context windows and mediocre vector database retrieval. We believe in a file-based context engineering approach, inspired by coding agents, to create a memory that truly grows with the user.
• A significant part of your role will involve building proactive, agentic AI behavior. A mentor that only responds when prompted is insufficient; we need an AI that can initiate conversations, offer timely advice, and intervene at the right moments in the right way. This is an unsolved product and engineering problem that you will help define and solve. You will also work on morphing UI personalization, ensuring the AI adapts its behavior and interface dynamically based on the user's profile and needs, all while maintaining a consistent and intuitive experience at scale.
• Our focus is on applied engineering – taking cutting-edge research from labs and transforming it into a shippable product before anyone else. You will own critical components of this system. This includes the psychological profiling engine, the memory architecture that goes beyond traditional RAG and vector databases, and the agentic orchestration for multi-step AI behaviors, tool use, and proactive interventions. You will also develop evaluation frameworks to measure the AI's actual impact on user behavior change, ensuring our mentor is genuinely effective.
• You will build a model-agnostic infrastructure, designed to seamlessly integrate and benefit from advancements across the AI landscape, allowing us to swap and combine models as the field evolves. This includes deep integration with LLM APIs, focusing on streaming, latency optimization, cost management, sophisticated prompt engineering, and structured outputs. You will be writing production code from day one and making architectural decisions that will define the company's future. We operate with speed, shipping, observing, and iterating rapidly, leveraging AI to assist in our coding process while maintaining full ownership and understanding of critical systems.
• This role is ideal for engineers who have experience building real agentic systems – AI that takes sequences of actions, uses tools, manages state over time, and handles failures gracefully. You should have strong opinions on memory architecture, understanding the limitations of naive RAG for deep personalization and possessing a clear vision for superior approaches. You should be model-agnostic yet opinionated, with experience across various LLMs (Claude, GPT-4, Gemini, open-source) and the ability to discern the best tool for each task. You are someone who reads research papers with the intent to ship products, not to conduct research yourself, and you are frustrated by superficial AI wrappers that lack depth.
• We are looking for ambitious individuals who believe in building a generational consumer company. You should be creative, able to identify connections and possibilities that AI models might miss. Strong opinions on code quality and product experience are essential, as we value proactive recommendations. Autonomy is key; you should be able to identify problems and solve them without constant direction. A fast learning ability and a product-minded approach, understanding how technical decisions impact user experience, are crucial for success in this rapidly evolving space.
• Preferred qualifications include Python expertise, strong CS fundamentals, and experience with advanced LLM features like tool use and extended thinking. A background in behavioral science, psychology, or persuasive technology would be a significant asset, directly informing your approach to our core problem. We are open to candidates with varying levels of experience, prioritizing demonstrated impact and impressive AI project work over traditional titles or years of service. Ultimately, you want to build something people love and use, work with experienced founders who have a track record of shipping AI products and successful exits, and be part of a small, high-equity, high-impact team in San Francisco.

🎯 Requirements

• Proven experience building sophisticated agentic AI systems that manage state, use tools, and handle complex, multi-step actions, rather than simple chatbots or RAG pipelines.
• Deep understanding and strong opinions on AI memory architecture, with a clear perspective on how to overcome the limitations of standard retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) for deep, long-term personalization.
• Experience working with and evaluating various Large Language Models (LLMs) such as Claude, GPT-4, Gemini, and open-source alternatives, with the ability to make informed decisions about model selection for specific applications.
• A strong product mindset and the ability to translate complex technical concepts into tangible user benefits, coupled with a passion for building consumer products that users genuinely love and find impactful.

🏖️ Benefits

• Significant equity stake in a rapidly growing pre-seed startup with substantial funding.
• Competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package.
• Opportunity to work directly with repeat founders who have a proven track record of shipping impactful AI products at Google and successfully exiting previous ventures.
• A dynamic, fast-paced, and collaborative work environment focused on innovation and rapid iteration, with a commitment to using AI to enhance the development process.
• In-person collaboration in San Francisco 4 days a week, fostering strong team cohesion and rapid problem-solving, with flexibility for remote work from Europe, Asia, or Australia for up to a month annually.
• Generous parental leave policy (3 months fully paid) and a culture that respects work-life balance, with founders actively prioritizing family time.

Skills & Technologies

Python

Android

Data Science

Remote

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New Quest AI, Inc.

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About New Quest AI, Inc.

New Quest AI is a technology company focused on developing advanced artificial intelligence solutions. Their core business revolves around creating and deploying AI-powered tools and platforms designed to enhance efficiency, automate complex tasks, and provide data-driven insights across various industries. They specialize in areas such as machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision, aiming to help businesses leverage the power of AI to solve critical challenges and drive innovation. Their offerings cater to clients seeking to optimize operations, improve decision-making, and gain a competitive edge through cutting-edge AI applications.

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