Initialized is a generalist seed-stage venture firm with over $3B in AUM. The team works closely with technical, ambitious founders and backs them early as they build enduring companies.
Initialized is focused on investing across AI, robotics, space, energy, defense, and crypto. The firm has backed companies including Coinbase, Instacart, Flexport, Rippling, and Flock Safety, and spends a lot of time thinking about how new tools, especially AI, are changing how companies get built.
As our AI Engineer, you will be the technical glue that builds, automates, and maintains the systems and processes that enable our team to do our jobs better. As an engineering team of one, you will have the autonomy to make architectural decisions and will work across the stack, from APIs and data pipelines to investor-facing UI, to build mission-driven tools that directly influence investment decisions, portfolio growth, and firm efficiency.
Reporting to an Initialized Partner, this is a high-impact role designed for someone looking to shape their career in the new AI-first economy.
You will:
- Translate business needs into technical specifications
- Collaborate cross-functionally with investors, finance, and operations teams to identify bottlenecks
- Design, build, and ship internal tools, including investor dashboards and internal workflow automation
- Own Knowledge Base Management & Integration
- Maintain the codebase of our proprietary CRM while implementing new features
- Build dashboards and data visualization for monitoring key operational metrics
- Development & Maintain AI Agents
- Build agents to support investment and portfolio support operations while maintaining full accountability for code comprehension, quality, and security.
- AI Tool Research and Adoption
- Spearhead testing of novel AI tooling. Own AI R&D and adoption efforts by researching, prototyping, and validating new AI tools, agent architectures, and automation approaches to integrate into core workflows
Who You Are
We’re looking for an analytical builder who scores high on curiosity, ownership, and growth mindset and are optimizing for the following:
You Thrive When
- Given high autonomy and high ambiguity
- Switching between strategic problem-solving and hands-on building
- Being told the outcome and you need to figure out the fastest way to deliver it
Traits We Look For
- Exceptionally resourceful, proactive, and motivated by hard problems and building from the ground up.
- Fast learner, especially with new tools and systems
- Strong communicator and cross-functional collaborator
- High-velocity operator with an owner mindset who knows when & how to escalate vs. fix independently
- A reputation for positively improving the processes, systems, and teams you are a part of
Skills & Experience:
- 2-5 years of software engineering, with demonstrated ability to ship production systems and a strong intuition of software development best practices
- Proficiency in the following tech stack: Ruby, Typescript
- Hands-on experience with LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.) and prompt engineering for production use cases
- Experience designing data models and CRMs
- Familiarity with workflow orchestration
- Adept at gathering requirements, extracting insights, weighing trade-offs, and delivering effective internal solutions.
Why Join Us:
Impact: Build AI systems and autonomous workflows that contribute to a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.
Innovation: Be on the leading edge of applying AI/LLMs to venture capital workflows.
Collaboration: Work with a lean, entrepreneurial team of investors, technologists, and operators.
Growth: Opportunity to greenfield new tools and make real decisions about how systems are built
This is a hybrid role based in San Francisco, CA.
Compensation: $130- $155k (depending upon experience)