Founding AI Engineer

Note: These roles are exclusively available to U.S. citizens who can obtain and maintain a U.S. government-issued Top Secret security clearance. There are no exceptions.

Who We Are: 

Our mission at Hazel is simple and powerful. We use AI to help U.S. government purchasing teams buy at the speed of need with unparalleled efficiency and cost-effectiveness. It is a $2.7T problem every single year, and Hazel is at the forefront with State, Local, and EDucation (SLED) and federal government agencies.

Government procurement has moved at a glacial pace for decades, stovepiped by complex processes, regulatory capture, and overworked civil servants. The impacts are severe. Our founders saw at Palantir and BCG how lowly procurement challenges fueled wildfires across California, compromised critical U.S. national security systems, and wasted billions of dollars.

Hazel has identified a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to solve this by deploying cutting-edge AI to the public sector and unlocking the full potential of our nation. We empower our partners to move with expediency against the most pressing challenges of this century including climate sustainability, great power competition, and more. Hazel builds AI for the public interest. 

What We Are Building: 

Hazel is transforming government procurement – how government agencies purchase goods and services from commercial vendors. This includes everything from copy paper to wind turbines to nuclear submarines. Our platform supports the full lifecycle of government procurement from need identification through award management. Hazel’s partners include state & local governments, schools, and federal agencies with whom we develop a product with features including: 

• AI labeling and categorization of solicitation text documents 

• Creation of solicitation documents with generative AI 

• Vendor discovery, labeling, and identification 

• Purchasing decision optimization with data-driven insights 

• Indexing and referencing of compliance documents

Why Join Hazel: 

As a Hazel founding engineer, you will gain unparalleled access and insight into how top government stakeholders manage billion-dollar purchasing decisions. You’ll then turn those insights into product by owning development of one of the most innovative, consequential, and secure software solutions in government today. This includes building secure large language models, integrating and training them on unstructured text data from over 19,000 agencies, and building a responsive front-end cloud-hosted application. You will be on the ground with us as we pitch and deliver solutions to our customers across the nation. Only Hazel offers the cadence and rigor of a tech startup paired with the impact and mission of the public sector. 

You’ll work side-by-side with inquisitive and driven founders who want to grow with and support you every way they can. The founders continuously promote learning (about everything) and have numerous resources available from other founders/startups/VCs.

Hazel is a mission-driven organization founded by engineers and built around delivering world-class innovation to our government partners. We strive for excellence, deliver impact, and have fun doing it.

How You Fit Us: 

You care about mission. Hazel partners with agencies supporting everything from public school teachers in the classroom to warfighters in the field. We believe in products which change America for the better. 

You solve problems. There’s no more time to opine on strategy and policy when our nation faces existential challenges, today. We are workhorses, not showhorses.

You are always learning. Nobody has all the answers, and the world is ever-evolving – so we must be adaptive. We bring the best practices available from all domains to meet the challenge.

You believe in teamwork. Our team grows together, supports one another, and elevates our shared successes. We are more effective together.

About the Role: 

As Hazel’s founding AI engineer, you will lead Hazel’s AI efforts and establish game-changing and secure usage of large language models (LLMs) in government. You will train and implement best-in-class large language models for procurement tasks, from generating solicitation content to evaluating solicitation responses.  You will discover and implement the best use cases for LLMs for Hazel’s users. You will help define team norms, operating principles, team culture, and more. Most importantly, you join the tip of the spear in delivering effective and secure AI for the public sector. 

What You’ll Do Day-to-Day: 

• Develop and deploy LLMs across the full stack, from enriching data to generating actions in the application 

• Establish and refine processes for implementing LLMs, including best practices for prompting, experimentation/evaluation, LLM Ops, and measuring quality and performance 

• Collaborate with colleagues, customers, and partners to understand key tactical and strategic priorities and deliver innovative, impactful solutions 

• Take ownership of projects, ensuring they meet rigorous standards of quality, performance, and security 

What We’re Looking For: 

• Proven experience as an AI engineer or similar role 

• Strong skills in data processing tools and techniques; proficiency in Python  

• Experience with LLM Ops and tools (e.g. vector databases, RAG, prompting) 

• Familiarity with version control systems (e.g., Git) 

• Familiarity with cloud platforms and services (e.g., AWS, Azure), server management, CI/CD tools, and software infrastructure fundamentals (networking, security, distributed systems) 

• Strong technical writing abilities to support user training, product documentation, and proposal writing 

• Excitement about bringing innovation to the public sector 

• Continuous drive towards learning and personal development 

• Travel 25-50% to co-locate with the team in New York/Boston or onsite to customer locations in the U.S. 

• U.S. Citizen, with the ability to obtain and maintain a Top Secret U.S. government-issued security clearance 

Nice to Have Experience: 

• Developing and deploying LLMs in applications, with a strong intuition of what works and what doesn’t 

• Parallel programming and design practices using GPUs 

• Mapping business priorities to technical priorities and vice versa 

• Working with or adjacent to the public sector 

• Presenting to senior stakeholders (e.g., C-suite, elected official, general officer) in a professional context 

Base Salary Range: 

$120K - $200K USD | 1% - 2% Company Equity 

• Estimate provided is dependent on a wide range of factors, including years of experience, relevant knowledge, and security clearance 

• Generous health & 401(k) benefits 

• Relocation Assistance 

• Unlimited PTO 

Hazel is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status, age, or any other federally protected class. 

Hazel’s name is inspired by Hazel Ying Lee, one of the first Chinese-American women to serve in the U.S. military as a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots in World War II. All Americans can break barriers, dare to innovate, and be the change.