Job description
We are a development, data science and design studio that works closely with founders and executives to create custom software and machine learning solutions.
AE Studio is an LA-based company focused on increasing human agency, primarily by making the imminent AGI future go well. Our team consists of the best developers, data scientists, researchers, and founders. We do all sorts of projects, always of the quality that makes our clients sing our praises.
We’ve worked with Samsung, Walmart, Berkshire Hathaway, and other large, important entities you’ve probably heard of. Our work environment is fantastic for aspiring coders, calculators, and entrepreneurs. Also, we have neither VC, nor PE, nor other acronyms funding us. We have a weird business model where we sell our work for a profit and use those profits to pay people (I told you it was weird!). We then reinvest those profits into our promising research on AI alignment and our ambitious internal skunkworks projects. We previously sold one of our skunkworks for some number of millions of dollars.
We have made a name for ourselves in cutting-edge brain computer interface (BCI) R&D, and we are making a name for ourselves in our research and policy efforts on AI alignment. We want to optimize for human agency, if you feel similarly, please apply to support our efforts. Data scientists will have the opportunity between client projects to work on important alignment research, with the opportunity to potentially have your research project prioritized if particularly promising.
ABOUT YOU
- Experience with ML or alignment research
- You care about AI alignment, and are optimistic in humanity’s capacity to problem solve and safely navigate accelerating AI capabilities and have an awesome future
- Eager to use AI and automate everything you do
- Comfortable working in a fast-paced, startup-like environment
- Proven data science experience–primary or equal contributor, multiple smaller projects, management of stake-holders.
- Experience working with / building / training deep learning-based computer vision or NLP models or LLMs
- Lots of experience with Python
- Experience calling AI models’ APIs via REST or client libraries
- Growth mindset. Excited about learning new things and solving difficult problems
- Demonstrated ability to work independently/autonomously
- Track record for breaking down complex problems into manageable chunks for individual or team execution
- Full-time availability–but if you have cool side projects that increase human agency, we totally want you to keep working on it…we’ll even help!
- Ability to communicate effectively and work exclusively in English and communicate complex technical concepts clearly to a non-technical audience
BONUS POINTS FOR
- Experience with self-managed data science projects–show us your cool side hustles, especially if they increase human agency!
- Experienced with software engineering best practices / software development background
- Agile experience (worked with Kanban, Scrum, Extreme Programming)
- JavaScript / Node.js experience
- Experience managing clients and client relationships
- Experience in startups
- Being in LA to work in person from our amazing office
RECRUITING NOTE
- There are an increasing number of scammers out there that are taking advantage of our company’s name to scam people with fake offers that result in you ultimately giving the scammers money. Please make sure anyone who contacts you is contacting you from the domains ae.studio, agencyenterprise.com, agencyenterprisestudio.com (please make sure that the sender really is from those domains). If you have any questions about any interviews or offers you might have received and seem bogus, please contact [email protected].
Equity
Working at AE means receiving equity in some of our client projects and in the Skunkworks projects we incubate. The equity granted is priced at a value of $0 when you receive it. If it were otherwise, you’d be forced to pay taxes. But to be clear, there are no free lunches, only the choice of who pays for your sandwich.
At AE, the equity you receive is not free to AE. We invest millions annually in Skunkworks projects - paying our employees to build technology for which no client pays a bill. We receive equity from certain clients, which means we accept less in terms of our billable rate. We then pass that equity on to our employees. Sure it’s priced at $0 on day 1 - a call option on a stock trading at $100 with a strike price of $100 is priced at $0 today for tax purposes, but you’d want to receive that option. If you received that option on a dozen stocks, you’d be fairly confident that some of them would be worth a lot more than $0.
Offering this equity (by investing in Skunkworks or offering clients a lower rate) comes out of AE’s margins. Theoretically, we should be lowering salaries to compensate. But we’re competitive on that front as well. Over the long-term, we believe AE employees who stick around are likely to fare extremely well monetarily (no legal promises). We think long-term. You should too when you choose your employer.
We are looking to hire people who think long term. People create exponentially more value here in their 3rd or 4th year rather than their 1st or 2nd, and that only increases. The value you create leads to more equity issued every year, and you retain it while you remain at AE or at a Skunkworks co that spins out, in order to free up equity for others, which is how we afford to be generous with the equity.
\* Disclaimer: If you leave AE on good terms, you can retain 20% of your equity if you continue to send leads our way, share our core values, etc. If you leave AE for your own AE-incubated Skunkworks project (or someone else’s), you retain 100% of your equity. Folks create exponentially more value here in their 3rd and 4th years than their 1st or 2nd - we want folks who think long-term like we do.
