Founding Data Platform Engineer (Staff / Principal)

About Woven

Consumer Travel is Ripe for Disruption

Travel has a priceless impact on our lives, manifested in ways as varied as points on the map. But a universal experience among travelers today is the difficult chore of making a trip happen. The current travel landscape is a maze of disjointed self-serve transactions and hundreds of websites with conflicting information – sucking the fun out of getting away. So while today's travelers are seeking authentic, inspiring, and personalized experiences that reflect their tastes and interests – many journeys instead begin with stress, uncertainty, decision fatigue, and fear of missing out. 

Your AI Travel Partner

This is why we created Woven, an AI travel partner that helps you discover, plan, and experience perfectly-tailored travel, all in one app. Our team is fusing beautiful, user-centric design with the latest advancements in agent architectures and LLMs. Woven learns your unique preferences and circumstances, makes exquisite recommendations, and helps craft personalized, authentic, and meaningful experiences. What previously took hours of research can now be discovered in minutes, with destinations, accommodations, dining, and activities perfectly tailored to you and effortlessly organized as you discover new ideas. Today, we are a stealth startup in private Beta, backed by top venture capital firms and scaling rapidly to deliver the most advanced AI experience that puts travelers back at the center of their journeys. Imagine a limitless travel guidebook, written and rewritten just for you. That’s Woven.

Market Opportunity

Generational shifts in consumer preferences have transformed the travel and tourism industry, representing more than 10% of the global GDP. We know that younger generations prioritize experiences over material possessions, and the influence of social media inspires travelers to seek out unique and authentic travel. But there remains a significant gap between consumer expectations for personalized experiences and the sector’s ability to deliver on them. Woven is well-positioned to close this gap by providing a personal AI travel agent that’s affordable, available 24/7, anticipates questions, and shares local insights, captivating photos, maps, itineraries, pricing, and availability within seconds. With the online travel market – already a $2.3 trillion industry – projected to grow by more than 10% per year through 2030, we anticipate putting perfectly-tailored travel into the hands of millions.

Why Woven?

Our mission is to empower The Curious to discover and meaningfully experience the world – and that begins with making travel simple, personalized, and joyful again. Woven is delivering on the mission with an experienced founding team of industry veterans from Airbnb, Future, Lyft, Primer.ai, Uber, and YouTube who have collectively founded or been founding team members at 16 companies. CEO Jonathan Downey is a 3x AI-startup founder, MIT engineer, and 3rd generation pilot with a lifelong passion for travel, and the team brings together decades of expertise in consumer apps, AI/ML, design and data-driven personalization. Woven is backed by founders & executives from Lookout, Pinterest, TaskRabbit, Twitter, and Stitchfix alongside multiple venture funds including Signalfire.

The Role: Founding Data Platform Engineer 

As our Founding Data Platform engineer you will build the foundations that support delivering AI and ML solutions to our consumer application. You will be responsible for shaping our data infrastructure which will drive our conversational AI agents, large language models, recommender systems, and ML algorithms. 

Your ability to work autonomously as part of a team will be essential: we'll look to you to guide decisions, identify opportunities, and ultimately establish the appropriate abstractions and frameworks to enable our technical teams and platform to scale. You'll be deeply involved in our operations, ensuring the reliability of our infrastructure and developing any needed in-house computing solutions. 

Responsibilities

You will oversee all aspects of our Data Platform, and will report to ourVP of Engineering, Ryan Stevens. In this role you will: 

• Enable the rapid development and iteration of AI Agent architectures and LLMs by our machine learning team 

• Design, build, and maintain platforms and processes which enable high velocity of ML product development, productionalization, and data-driven decisions at scale

• Leverage cloud platforms and 3rd party solutions as appropriate to establish and manage our data warehouse, workflows and orchestrations

• Build strong relationships with our machine learning and engineering teams, fostering a culture of collaboration and technical excellence

• Ensure our solutions stay ahead of the curve by staying up-to-date with the latest technologies

This role merges technical expertise, strategic vision, and a dedication to team collaboration. Join us, and channel your passion for technology into transformative solutions for the world.

Desired Qualifications 

• Strong expertise in software engineering with exceptional coding and design skills, proficiency in Python required

• Experience in developing infrastructure, frameworks, and tools to accelerate algorithm development, model deployment, and AI/ML applications integration

• In-depth knowledge of cloud computing platforms, especially GCP or AWS, and familiarity with big data technologies like Kafka, Spark, Hive/Iceberg, Postgres, and Redis.

• Proven history of collaborating with data scientists and machine learning engineers, translating complex needs into actionable platform and engineering requirements

• Experience designing and implementing microservice architectures, particularly low-latency REST APIs

• Comfortable in fast-paced environments, adaptable to changes, and ability to lead projects autonomously from conception to completion

• Exceptional communication skills, capable of conveying intricate technical concepts to diverse audiences

• A background in building and managing data platforms in growth-oriented companies, whether in startups or tech-leading roles in larger organizations

Bonus Experience 

• Strong familiarity with machine learning and AI concepts

• Built scalable and robust infrastructure for generative AI systems

• Building and maturing Data Platform teams and infrastructure in a startup environment

Total Compensation & Pay Transparency

The compensation package for this role is meant to align with top Series-A companies and includes:

• Cash Compensation: The expected cash compensation for US employees in this position is $200K - $250K.

• Equity: As a founding engineer on the team, you will be granted significant ownership in the company

• Benefits: Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance for you and your dependents

Our Team

On our team we have:

• Three-time entrepreneur and founder/CEO with a history of raising over $100M in funding;

• Four-time COO and three-time founding employee with a history of raising over $500M in funding;

• Hands-on engineering leader, and former CTO, with expertise in full stack development, who has built high performing teams over 15 years, and worked for start-ups to Fortune 500 companies;

• Product leader with a decade of AI/ML product leadership experience for products spanning NLP, LLMs, signal processing, and computer vision;

• Machine learning expert with 12 years experience working across a range of domains from finance, ad tech and search, with research driving over 500 academic citations.

Together we’ve worked across dozens of different industries, and share a diverse range of backgrounds and interests, that span: computing, theater, skiing, physics, gardening, chess, mathematics, kiteboarding, and travel! Yes - we are all passionate about Travel. We’ve deeply felt the struggles with the modern discovery and trip experience, and started this company with a mission to solve it together!

Compensation Range: $200K - $250K