Senior ML & AI Engineer

Why we exist

AI is everywhere, shaping how we live and work. We believe it should help people stay in control of their choices, build real connections, and pursue long‑term goals. Autonomy, relationships, and purpose are the foundations of a meaningful life. Ascending AI builds tools that strengthen all three. We deeply believe in this mission and invested €5m of our own capital to stay initially independent and focused on building what matters most.

What we’re building

We’re starting with a product that helps people map their relationships and spot communication patterns, immediate value that makes daily life clearer and more intentional. This is also the foundation for a broader suite of tools designed to protect autonomy, strengthen connections, and support long-term goals.

The role

We’re currently looking for experienced senior Machine Learning & Agentic AI Engineers. You will play a critical role in designing, developing, and optimising our innovative products. We will only consider top-tier candidates with an entrepreneurial mindset and those who thrive in demanding environments.

For all our candidates, we expect the following requirements:

• A minimum of 5+ years of software engineering experience

• Ability to ship complex products independently or in small teams

• Strong programming skills in Python; bonus for Rust, Go, or TypeScript

• Experience with distributed systems and cloud-native tooling such as Docker, Kubernetes, Vercel, AWS

• Comfortable with a fast-paced, iterative product development

• High autonomy, low ego, strong collaboration mindset, roll-up-your-sleeves

• Able to mentor junior engineers and contribute to architecture decisions

• Passion for cutting-edge technology

• Fluent English language skills are required

Candidates may align with one or both of the specialisations below:

Specialisation 1 – Evaluations and ML

• Experience designing and implementing generative AI evaluations

• Hands-on experience with benchmarking tools like HELM, MMLU, Arena

• Experience with fine-tuning, synthetic data production, prompt engineering, and model comparisons

• Understands evaluation of alignment, robustness, and risk in LLMs

Specialisation 2 – Agentic Deployment

• Building agentic workflows using LangChain, AutoGen, CrewAI, or custom

• Experience deploying LLM-powered tools (assistants, copilots, agents)

• Full-stack engineering skills for production deployment

• Familiar with edge deployments and local inference

• UX-minded: builds tools humans can actually use
  

These are remote or hybrid roles. We work primarily in the Central European time zone and expect candidates to be within ±3 hours of CET to keep alignment and syncs tight.