Machine Learning Engineer / Researcher — Hestus (YC)

Location: San Mateo, CA (Onsite preferred — open to Bay Area candidates willing to commute)
Compensation: $110,000 – $175,000 base + meaningful equity
Visa Sponsorship: None available — US work authorization required
Experience Level: 4+ years (or equivalent research-based Master's / PhD)
Employment Type: Full-Time

Hestus is building AI-powered CAD to fundamentally change how hardware is designed and manufactured. Founded by repeat deep-tech entrepreneurs with experience from top YC companies and frontier robotics, Hestus is turning CAD into an intelligent collaborator that understands design intent and autocompletes the work — letting hardware teams move from weeks of repetitive clicking to minutes of high-leverage engineering. YC-backed, 5–10 person team based in San Mateo.

This is the first senior ML and research hire at Hestus. You will own the full lifecycle of ML systems powering the AI-driven CAD product — moving between deep research and hands-on engineering, scoping problems with the founders, designing and training novel models, and shipping them into robust production code. Over time you will have the opportunity to define the roadmap for CAD-focused ML research, mentor future hires, and grow into a Staff/Principal IC or early engineering leader.

• Design, train, and iterate on custom deep learning models that understand CAD workflows and predict high-quality next-step suggestions
• Build and maintain robust Python training and evaluation pipelines — data preprocessing, experimentation, and offline/online metrics
• Architect model serving and backend components so features are fast, reliable, and easy to integrate into CAD environments
• Work closely with the founder and early customers (mechanical and hardware engineers) to understand real-world workflows and translate them into ML formulations
• Own the full lifecycle of ML features — from research and prototyping through productionization, deployment, and monitoring
• Collaborate with the broader engineering team on core product and infrastructure work — backend, APIs, data models, performance
• Establish best practices for experimentation, logging, and model comparison
• Stay current on relevant ML research (sequence models, geometric deep learning, representation learning) and apply pragmatically

• 4+ years of hands-on ML experience, or equivalent research-based Master's or PhD
• Proven track record of training and improving deep models — not just calling hosted APIs
• Expert with PyTorch (preferred), TensorFlow, or JAX — comfortable implementing and modifying custom architectures, loss functions, and training loops
• Strong production-ready Python — clean, well-structured, with tests, documentation, and thoughtful abstractions
• End-to-end ownership experience — data to deployment, training pipelines, hyperparameter tuning, shipping models into real products
• Ability to work closely with founders and translate open-ended product requirements into concrete ML formulations
• Able to commute to San Mateo for onsite or hybrid work
• US work authorization required — no sponsorship available

• Experience with geometry, graphics, CAD, 3D representations, or robotics
• Familiarity with cloud ML platforms (AWS/GCP) and backend frameworks (FastAPI, Flask, Django)
• Published research or meaningful open-source contributions demonstrating novel technical work

1. Short online survey (~15 minutes)
2. Initial call (30–45 minutes) with founders
3. Take-home coding and ML exercise (target ~8 hours)
4. Onsite or virtual technical interviews with CEO, CTO, and engineering team — ML system design, research thinking, production engineering
5. Offer

• Onsite preferred in San Mateo — Bay Area candidates willing to commute considered
• US work authorization required — no visa sponsorship or relocation assistance available

Shortlisted candidates will be contacted by David Joseph & Co., the recruiting partner managing this search on behalf of Hestus.