Job Description

**San Francisco (Hybrid or Remote U.S.)**
💸 **Heavy equity | early technical founder track**

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At **Partner Element** , we’re building the **intelligence layer for
enterprise procurement** \- think AI-powered self-service for spend questions.
Our platform connects ERP, contracts, payments, and email into one knowledge
layer that makes supplier data instantly accessible through Slack or Teams.

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### **The mission**

Empower employees to make informed buying decisions in seconds, not days.
Eliminate the repetitive work that creates delays, confusion, and frustration
across the entire org.
Free procurement and finance to focus on strategy, not firefighting.

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### **Stage**

Early-stage, already live in production, with customers using the product
daily and **scaling to thousands of employees per customer**.

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### **The role**

As the **Founding AI Engineer (AI Lead)** , you’ll own Partner Element’s **AI
intelligence layer** \- the retrieval, reasoning, and automation systems that
answer spend questions with accuracy and context.

You’ll design **prompt architectures** , **automated evaluation frameworks** ,
and **production-grade AI workflows** that make the system smarter with every
query.

This role is ideal for someone who who has shipped **production LLM systems**
, has experience doing so in **enterprise environments** , and is excited
about transforming bureaucratic processes through **democratized information
and automation**.

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### **You might be a fit if you:**

* Have **5–10 years** of experience building and shipping **ML-powered or AI-native products**.

* Have worked with **LLM applications** \- RAG, prompt orchestration, chaining, or agent frameworks ( **LangGraph** , **LangChain** , etc).

* Understand **retrieval and reasoning systems** \- prompt design, evaluation, and optimization for enterprise data.

* Have built **production-grade AI systems** balancing reliability, latency, and trustworthiness.
* Are strong in **Python** , and comfortable across **backend, data, and AI layers**.

* Can design **automated evaluation** and feedback loops for continuous improvement.

* Think **pragmatically** , choosing the right level of sophistication for each problem.

* Communicate clearly in English and can work directly with **U.S.-based founders** and **enterprise customers**.

* **Bonus:** experience integrating **AI systems into Slack/Teams** or workflow automation tools.

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❌ **Not a fit if:**

* Your background is primarily front-end, academic, or research-only.

* You haven’t shipped applied **LLM** or retrieval projects beyond experimentation.

* You haven’t spent at least 1 year in an early-stage startup and 2+ years in a larger enterprise (1k+ employees), and therefore may not have the right mix of speed and rigor.

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### **Tech stack**

Python (FastAPI) for AI/ML layer · Ruby on Rails for web app · AWS (EKS, RDS,
OpenSearch) · LangGraph · Terraform · Postgres · Slack/Teams APIs

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### **Why join**

* **Founding impact** – shape AI architecture, standards, and culture from day one

* **Cutting-edge work** – applying agentic AI to complex enterprise data problems

* **Live product** – what you build ships into production and reaches real users quickly

* **Meaningful equity** – ownership that grows with the company’s success

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💬 **Interested?**

DM the founder on **Wellfound** with a short note on what excites you about
building intelligent enterprise systems.

If it feels like a fit, we’ll schedule a **20-minute chat** to dive deeper.