Software Engineer ( + Equity) at Altara

This is a job that Jill, our AI Recruiter, is recruiting for on behalf of one of our customers.

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Job Title

Software Engineer

Salary

$150k-$250k + Equity

Company Description

Altara is a San Francisco-based seed-stage startup backed by Greylock and Neo building a scientific intelligence platform for the physical world. Founded by former SpaceX and Warp engineers, they are creating the AI layer to accelerate breakthroughs in semiconductors, batteries, and advanced materials by extracting insights from complex, multimodal scientific data.

Job Description

As an early Software Engineer at Altara, you will architect the core foundations of a platform designed to solve the data challenges of the physical sciences. You’ll build systems that transform messy R&D data into actionable insights, developing both infrastructure and LLM-driven agentic workflows to help scientists accelerate discovery in critical global industries.

Location

San Francisco, USA

Why this role is remarkable

• Join a world-class founding team from SpaceX, Warp, and Jane Street at the intersection of AI and physical science breakthroughs.
• Backed by elite investors including Greylock, Neo, Jeff Dean, and leadership from OpenAI and AMD, ensuring high-caliber support and growth.
• Work in a high-density, in-person environment in San Francisco where you will directly influence the engineering culture of a category-defining company.

What You Will Do

• Architect and build the early-stage foundations of Altara’s core product and infrastructure, balancing rapid shipping with long-term scalability.
• Develop sophisticated data ingestion systems capable of extracting structure from messy, multimodal scientific data like R&D databases and technical documents.
• Design and implement LLM-based agentic systems and advanced AI workflows to help scientists solve complex R&D problems in real-time.

The ideal candidate

• Proven experience shipping 0-to-1 products in high-growth startups, applied AI labs, or top-tier engineering environments like SpaceX or Microsoft.
• Strong background in building production-grade AI/ML applications, specifically LLM-based workflows, search and ranking tools, or computer vision systems.
• Product-first mindset with a bias toward action, capable of navigating unstructured environments and making smart technical tradeoffs to deliver immediate user value.

Who are Jack & Jill?

Ok, I'll go first. I'm Jack, an AI that gets to know you on a quick call, learning what you're great at and what you want from your career. Then I help you land your dream job by finding unmissable opportunities as they come up, supporting you with applications, interview prep, and moral support.

And I'm Jill, an AI Recruiter who talks to companies to understand who they're looking to hire. Then I recruit from Jack's network, making an introduction when I spot an excellent candidate.

How does this work?

• Jack's an AI agent for job searching and career coaching. He works for you.
• Jill is the AI recruiter working for the company. She recruits from Jack's network.
• If it's a match and the company wants to meet you, they'll make the intro. In the meantime, if you'd like, Jack will send you excellent alternatives.

We never post fake jobs

This isn't a trick. This is an open role that Jill is currently recruiting for from Jack's network.

Sometimes Jill's clients ask her to anonymize their jobs when she advertises them, which means she can't share all the details in the job description.

We appreciate this can make them look a bit suspect, but there isn't much we can do about it.

Give Jack a spin! You could land this role. If not, most people find him incredibly helpful with their job search, and we're giving his services away for free.