Founding Lead AI Engineer - ResiQuant at Pear VC

About Us:

ResiQuant is revolutionizing how the world understands the built world exposed to natural disasters. From earthquakes to wildfires and hurricanes, the impact of climate change and urbanization is intensifying—and yet, decision-makers are forced to rely on fragmented, static, and often inaccurate property data.

ResiQuant is changing that. Our platform automates submission processing and enriches data, enabling insurers to elevate underwriting precision and productivity. Trusted by leading earthquake insurers in the United States, ResiQuant serves as the definitive source of property intelligence. Our AI, grounded in structural engineering expertise, ensures that portfolios dynamically reflect evolving building codes, ordinances, and local construction practices, providing actionable insights for informed decision-making.

We are fueled by an unrelenting focus on protecting lives, property, and livelihoods; ResiQuant is building the future of property risk intelligence at a time when it has never been more crucial.

Join us in redefining disaster resilience and shaping a safer world.

About You:

As the Lead AI Engineer in Computer Vision and Vision-Language Models, you work closely with the founders to design, develop, and deploy advanced AI models that harness the power of computer vision and vision-language capabilities to analyze building data through the lenses of a domain expert. You will lead and mentor a team of engineers, collaborating closely to drive innovations in AI, optimize model performance, and deliver robust, scalable solutions. This role requires a blend of technical expertise, hands-on leadership, and a strong desire to work hard and thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.

Start date: Immediate

Responsibilities:

Technical Leadership: Drive the development and deployment of cutting-edge computer vision and vision-language models, ensuring alignment with company goals and industry best practices.

Team Management: Lead a team of engineers, fostering a collaborative and innovative culture, setting clear goals, and ensuring high-quality deliverables.

R&D and Innovation: Stay updated with the latest research in vision and vision-language models, identifying and integrating new techniques and technologies to maintain a competitive edge.

Model Optimization: Ensure models are efficient, scalable, and optimized for performance across various applications and platforms.

Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with the founders, product managers, data scientists, and other members of the team to align model development with business objectives and product requirements.

Qualifications:

Experience:

• Minimum of 4 years of experience in computer vision and vision-language models.
• Experience leading a team of engineers, with a track record of delivering successful AI projects that involve fine-tunning, training, and deploying LLMs.
• Expertise designing and implementing machine learning architectures using frameworks like TensorFlow, PyTorch, or similar.

Education: Master's or Ph.D. in Computer Science, AI, or a related field with a specialization in computer vision, NLP, or machine learning.

Technical Skills:

• Strong knowledge of computer vision algorithms, vision-language integration, and multimodal AI models.
• Proficiency in Python and experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) for model deployment.
• Familiarity with image processing libraries, NLP libraries, and LLMs (both, open source and commercial).

What will make you stand out:

• Leader of a fast-paced AI development team.
• Ph.D. in CS with focus on computer vision and/or LLMs.
• Experience with AI applications using satellite and geospatial imagery.
• Conference and/or journal publications on ML, deep learning, or LLMs.
• Proficiency/Experience collecting and interpreting data from interviews.

What drives us:

• Impact: we are driven by a shared mission to address a paramount challenge of our time
• Resolve: we believe that hard work and resilience yield extraordinary outcomes
• Urgency: we are motivated to outpace rapid urbanization and escalating disaster impacts

Why join RQ:

• Opportunity to be involved in an early-stage startup and build the culture you want to see.
• Chance to pioneer and disrupt one of the world's largest industries.
• Experience firsthand the tangible impact of what you build.

Day to day:

• Research and deploy architectures for AI systems trained on structural engineering and disaster risk domain expertise for classification tasks.
• Participate in product ideation and development.
• Interface with product managers, software development, and AI team to understand product goals and data needs.
• Write, test, document, and review code according to RQ’s development standards that you would help to define.

What we offer:

• Competitive salary commensurate with experience
• Equity in the company as an early stage member
• Vibrant tech startup environment
• Competitive company 401(k) program with company matching
• Health insurance
• Working on the challenge of our generation with other passionate people