Founding AI/ML Engineer

Founding AI/ML Engineer

Company: Closure
Location: San Francisco, CA or New York, NY
Compensation: $165,000 - $250,000 + 0.3% - 1% equity
Employment Type: Full-time
Visa Sponsorship: Not available

About Closure

Closure helps law enforcement search evidence and solve crime. Police and prosecutors across the US use it to accelerate investigations into homicides, cold cases and other major offenses by reducing digital evidence overload, with about 10 live agency deployments and paying customers.

Closure was founded in 2025 by ex-Palantir and ex-IDF engineers who have built national-scale systems, and is backed by Y Combinator (W25), CRV, Hawktail, Liquid2 and Adverb.

The Role

As an early engineer you will shape Closure's AI backbone, processing massive video, audio and text datasets to surface investigative leads. The work spans backend infrastructure and applied ML: building retrieval pipelines, integrating LLMs and VLMs, and deploying secure, distributed systems in sensitive environments, end to end from data-flow design to production.

What You Will Do

• Build retrieval pipelines over large video, audio and text datasets.
• Integrate LLMs and VLMs into investigative workflows.
• Deploy secure, distributed systems in sensitive environments.
• Ship end to end, from data-flow design to production deployment.

What You Bring

• 3+ years of engineering experience across backend infrastructure and applied ML
• Experience shipping end to end in production
• Comfort in fast-paced, high-impact settings
• Eligibility for FBI/CJIS clearance (sponsored by the company)

Benefits

Free lunches and dinners, 3% 401(k) contribution, unlimited PTO, full health and dental, gym reimbursement, and FBI/CJIS clearance sponsorship.

REVENUE: 15.2% of first-year salary. Est. fee per hire $25K-$38K; 2 seat(s) = up to $63K if all filled.

TARGET COMPANIES (client-profile (Palantir FDE canonical) + suggested): Palantir, Anduril, Axon, Cellebrite, Flock Safety, Mark43, Relativity.

BEST-FIT CANDIDATE: 3+ yrs; backend + applied ML; retrieval/LLM/VLM; shipped to prod; visa: NO sponsorship; CJIS clearance-eligible; location: SF or NYC in person.