# AI Engineer - Unusual Ventures at Unusual Ventures AI Engineer - Unusual Ventures at Unusual Ventures in San Francisco Bay Area. On-site, full-time. Posted September 29, 2026. - Company: Unusual Ventures - Location: San Francisco Bay Area - Workplace: On-site - Job type: Full-time - Experience: 3+ years - Posted: 2026-09-29 - Apply: https://jobs.lever.co/unusual/2d147154-543a-4d92-9a96-6bbc079935e6/apply - Source: https://jobmagic.ai/jobs/ai-engineer-unusual-ventures-unusual-ventures-8te8fd ## Requirements - 3–6 years of software engineering experience, with at least 1–2 years shipping LLM-powered products or internal tools to production - BS or MS in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience - Strong Python (TypeScript a plus); comfortable across the stack, from data pipelines and APIs to a simple, usable front end - Hands-on experience with LLM APIs, retrieval, agents/tool use, and evaluation — and a clear view on when each is the wrong tool - Product taste: you talk to users, find the real problem, ship something small, and iterate - Experience working with messy real-world data (CRMs, email, calendars, third-party data providers) - Clear communicator who can explain tradeoffs to non-technical partners and earn their trust - Self-directed: comfortable setting priorities with light direction ## Description ### **About Unusual** Unusual Ventures is an early-stage venture firm that partners with exceptional enterprise software founders from pre-seed through Series B. We work hands-on with founders on go-to-market, customer discovery, and recruiting, with one goal: helping companies find product-market fit. We want AI built into how we source, evaluate, support, and run the firm — not bolted on. ### **About the Role** We're hiring our first AI Engineer to build the internal systems that can help our small team operate with scalable leverage. You'll work across the firm — investing, talent, platform, founder services, finance and operations — finding the highest-leverage problems, then designing, building, and shipping tools people use every day. You'll be our first engineer. That means real ownership and a lot of trust, and it also means you'll set the technical standards, choose the stack, and decide what's worth building. This is a builder role. We care more about solving the underlying problem well than wiring together the newest APIs. You'll have real ownership, direct access to partners and operators, and a short path from idea to production. From time to time you'll also work directly with portfolio companies: helping founders scope an AI feature, pressure-test their technical approach, or stand up an internal workflow. ### What You'll Build (Example projects for your first year): - **Talent intelligence. **Agents and pipelines that find, enrich, and rank engineering and GTM talent for our portfolio — working closely with our Talent Partner to turn our recruiting judgment into repeatable systems. - **Sourcing and research. **Tools that surface promising companies and founders early, and context-aware research assistants that draw on our CRM, notes, meeting history, and market data to prep partners before a first meeting. - **Diligence support. **Workflows that speed up market maps, competitive analysis, customer-call synthesis, and memo drafting — without losing rigor. - **Firm knowledge. **Making what the firm already knows (thousands of founder and customer conversations, past memos, playbooks) searchable and useful. - **Operations automation. **Removing manual work from portfolio reporting, LP updates, and back-office processes, in partnership with the CFO/O and VP Finance. - **Portfolio support. **Reusable AI playbooks and tools that our founder services team can deploy across portfolio companies. ### What We're Looking For (Required) - 3–6 years of software engineering experience, with at least 1–2 years shipping LLM-powered products or internal tools to production - BS or MS in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience - Strong Python (TypeScript a plus); comfortable across the stack, from data pipelines and APIs to a simple, usable front end - Hands-on experience with LLM APIs, retrieval, agents/tool use, and evaluation — and a clear view on when each is the wrong tool - Product taste: you talk to users, find the real problem, ship something small, and iterate - Experience working with messy real-world data (CRMs, email, calendars, third-party data providers) - Clear communicator who can explain tradeoffs to non-technical partners and earn their trust - Self-directed: comfortable setting priorities with light direction ### Nice to have - Experience building internal tools or intelligence products at a VC firm, investment firm, or data-heavy operations team - Early-stage startup experience, or time as a founder - Familiarity with venture or enterprise software GTM - Experience with recruiting or people data - Public work — open-source projects, side projects, writing — that shows how you think and build ### How We Work - **Small team, high leverage. **Your tools will be used daily by the whole firm, and you'll see the impact directly. - **Build, don't just integrate. **Buy off the shelf when it's the right call; build when the problem calls for it. - **In person. **We work together in the Bay Area office. Being close to the people using your tools is part of the job. - **Founders first. **Everything we build should ultimately make us more useful to the founders we back. ### **How to Apply** Send your resume or LinkedIn, plus a short note about something you've built with AI that people actually use — what the problem was, what you shipped, and what you'd do differently. Links to code or demos are welcome.