Founding ML Engineer (Staff / Principal)

About Woven

Consumer Travel is Ripe for Disruption

Today's travelers are seeking personalized, immersive, and authentic experiences that reflect their unique tastes and interests. They want to be inspired, to feel the thrill of discovery, and to seamlessly benefit from technology throughout their journeys. Yet, the current travel landscape is a maze of disjointed self-serve transactions, often leaving travelers feeling frustrated and unfulfilled. The explosion of travel booking sites is sucking the fun out of getting away, with travelers needing to visit dozens of websites to plan a trip and often needing to resort to time consuming offline strategies. As a result, the joy of travel is often overshadowed by the stress of planning, with travelers spending significantly more time researching a vacation today than just a few years ago. 

Our AI-Native Travel Concierge

Introducing Woven, a stealth startup backed by four top venture funds that is reimagining the way we travel. Woven is building an AI-powered Travel Concierge (currently in private beta) that simplifies the process of discovering, planning, and booking trips, all in one app. It intuitively understands your preferences, assists in uncovering stays, activities, and dining options, and supports travelers throughout their journey, from exploring potential destinations to accommodating last-minute changes during a trip. It’s like having a personal travel agent, but better, as it’s affordable, available 24/7, responds within seconds, and is armed with local insights, captivating photos, maps, itineraries, pricing, and availability. By harnessing the latest advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) and pioneering breakthroughs in Agent Architectures, Woven is poised to revolutionize the travel industry.

Market Opportunity

Contributing over 10% to the global GDP, the travel and tourism sector is on the brink of a significant transformation resulting from fundamental shifts in consumer preferences. Newer generations are prioritizing experiences, particularly travel, over material possessions, and the influence of social media is further fueling this trend by inspiring travelers to seek out unique and personalized experiences. As a result, the online travel market, already a $2.3 trillion industry, is projected to grow by more than 10% per year through 2030. With its focus on crafting exquisite, personalized trips, Woven is well positioned to capitalize on these trends and transform the way we travel. 

Why Woven?

Woven' ability to execute this vision is underpinned by an experienced founding team and investors with highly-relevant expertise. Our CEO is Jonathan Downey, a three-time AI-startup founder, MIT engineer, and 3rd generation pilot with a lifelong passion for travel. Additional co-founders and founding team members bring decades of expertise in consumer apps and data-driven personalization and include a senior data leader from Stitchfix and the Head of ML from Candidate Labs. The company is backed by former executives from Pinterest, Twitter, and Stitchfix alongside top venture funds including SignalFire, SNR, Moxxie Ventures, and Fuel Capital.

The Role: Founding ML Engineer

As a Founding ML Engineer you will be at the forefront of creating transformative, AI-driven user experiences. This role is not just about building algorithms; it's about pioneering new approaches in conversational AI, search and retrieval, and recommender systems to craft personalized experiences that resonate with our users. Collaborating with our dynamic teams across product and engineering, you will identify complex challenges and innovate solutions that blend creativity with pragmatism. Your ability to work autonomously will be critical, you’ll be responsible for the full-stack: taking ideas from concept into production.

As a key technical leader on our Data & AI team, and will report to our co-founder and VP of Data & AI, Cian Menzel-Jones. In this role you will: 

• Architect and develop AI Agent architectures to power individualized user interactions in an environment where asynchronous communication and low-latency are paramount

• Experiment and optimize Large Language Models (LLMs), employing fine-tuning techniques to improve performance in specific tasks

• Harness different embedding techniques and vector databases, paving the way for state-of-the-art retrieval-augmented generation

• Innovate with feedback loops and human-in-the-loop processes in order to continuously refining our systems to better meet user needs

• Cultivate and leverage the foundational user and content data essential for developing the most personalized experiences to user

• Stay ahead of the curve by keeping abreast of the latest technological advancements, ensuring our solutions stay ahead of the curve

This role merges technical expertise, strategic vision, and a dedication to team collaboration. Join us, and channel your passion for technology into transformative solutions for the world.

Desired Qualifications:

• Strong background in software engineering, with exceptional coding and design skills, particularly in Python.

• Proven experience in building scalable ML systems, emphasizing low-latency operations and high reliability. 

• Deep understanding of ML models, evaluations, and the trade-offs involved in B2C applications.

• Practical experience with deep learning frameworks (eg PyTorch, TensorFlow) and architectures (RNNs, LSTM, Transformers).

• Familiarity with generative AI techniques, including LLMs, conversational agents, fine-tuning, RAG, and NLP technologies (Word2Vec, GloVe, BERT).

• Demonstrated ability to lead projects from conception to completion, thriving in fast-paced environments.

• Exceptional communication skills, capable of conveying intricate technical concepts to diverse audiences

Bonus Experience:

• Hands-on experience with cloud computing platforms (GCP, AWS) and big data technologies (Kafka, Spark, Flink, Hive/Iceberg, Redis) 

• Involvement in MLOps or infrastructure development for generative AI systems.

Total Compensation & Pay Transparency

The compensation package for this role is meant to align with top Series-A companies and includes:

• Cash Compensation: The expected cash compensation for US employees in this position is $200K - $250K.

• Equity: As a founding engineer on the team, you will be granted significant ownership in the company

• Benefits: Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance for you and your dependents

Our Team

On our team we have:

• Three-time entrepreneur and founder/CEO with a history of raising over $100M in funding

• COO who is a three-time co-founder/founding COO, with a history of raising over $500M in funding

• hands-on engineering leader, and former CTO, with expertise in full stack development, who has built high performing teams over 15 years, and worked for start-ups to Fortune 500 companies

• data science leader with 15-years of experience, who has scaled several data teams and built dozens of machine learning products from zero across multiple problems domains

• machine learning expert with 12 years experience working across a range of domains from finance, ad tech and search, with research driving over 500 academic citations

Together we’ve worked across dozens of different industries, and share a diverse range of backgrounds and interests, that span: computing, theater, skiing, physics, gardening, chess, mathematics, kiteboarding, and travel! Yes - we are all passionate about Travel. We’ve deeply felt the struggles with the modern discovery and trip experience, and started this company with a mission to solve it together!

Compensation Range: $200K - $250K