Founding Engineer, Environments + Data

Clera

San Francisco Full-time $200K – $300K/yr yesterday
Workplace
On-site
Location
San Francisco
Who can apply
Based in the United States: you usually need the right to work there

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About the role

About the Role

Build evaluation environments and benchmarks that measure whether AI agents can perform real-world company work and meet or exceed human performance. This founding engineering role combines agent evaluation research with production readiness, helping establish reliable evidence of agent capability.

What You'll Do

* Design synthetic company environments with realistic email, records, and files for agents to use over extended periods.

* Build graders and evaluation systems capable of assessing advanced agents, including cases where human reviewers may lack the relevant expertise.

* Develop benchmarks that correlate with real-world production performance.

* Find and address evaluation failure modes, including reward hacking and benchmark gaming.

* Simulate software tools such as inboxes and CRMs with enough fidelity to support agent interactions at scale.

What We're Looking For

* Hands-on research experience in synthetic data pipelines, benchmarks, evaluations, or model post-training; this is a research-oriented role, not a pure infrastructure engineering position.

* Experience building environments or benchmarks used to train or evaluate agents at a frontier AI lab, and implementing graders or evaluation systems for AI agents.

* At least 1 to 2 years at a fast-growing or AI-focused startup, plus mid-level or senior engineering or research experience.

* Experience simulating software systems for agent tool use, identifying benchmark flaws, and detecting and fixing reward hacking in evaluation systems.

* A degree from a highly selective university or an equivalent credential, such as founding a company or participating in a recognized founder program.

* High-level competition experience in mathematics, programming, debate, or games is a plus.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary is $200,000 to $300,000 annually, with up to $350,000 for exceptional candidates. Additional commission-style bonus of up to $200,000 or more is tied to the value of delivered environments. Meaningful founding equity is included. Visa sponsorship is available.

Location

On-site five days per week in San Francisco, California, United States.

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