This is a remote position.
The build: Our client is an early-stage commerce tech company building production computer vision for precise item identification and pricing. As founding ML engineer, you'll own the identification architecture, data strategy, evaluation standards, and production serving path — end to end, from foundation models fine-tuned toward a specific catalog.
The problem is fine-grained: brand, model, edition, variant. "Close" isn't good enough.
What you'll do
- Design and own the CV architecture for fine-grained item identification — starting from foundation vision models, fine-tuning toward the company's catalog.
- Define what "accurate enough" means per category; build calibrated confidence scoring so the product says "we're not sure" instead of guessing.
- Build the feedback loop between model errors and what gets labeled next, with the labeling lead.
- Decide where to invest: broader category coverage vs. deeper accuracy on today's categories.
- Own the serving path from research to production — latency, cost, reliability at scale.
- Represent the model's capabilities and limits company-wide — including with investors and customers.
Requirements
What we're looking for
- 5+ years applied CV, with at least one system shipped to production at meaningful scale.
- Hands-on fine-grained / instance-level classification — a problem where "close" isn't good enough.
- Fluency in PyTorch or TensorFlow; fine-tuning and deploying vision transformers or CNNs in production.
- Evaluation frameworks for vision models — you know when a model is actually getting better.
- Comfortable being the most senior technical voice on an open-ended problem with no playbook.
- Strong communication — you explain trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders.
Nice to have: resale/marketplace (StockX, GOAT, Vinted, Rebag, The RealReal) or visual search (Pinterest Lens, Google Lens, Syte); active learning / human-in-the-loop pipelines; low-latency API serving at scale; first-ML-hire startup experience.
Skills Required
- 5+ years of applied computer vision experience
- At least one machine learning system shipped to production at meaningful scale
- Hands-on experience with fine-grained or instance-level classification
- Fluency in PyTorch or TensorFlow
- Experience fine-tuning and deploying vision transformers or convolutional neural networks in production
- Experience building evaluation frameworks for vision models
- Ability to serve as the senior technical voice for open-ended problems
- Strong communication skills for explaining technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders
- Experience in resale or marketplace technology
- Experience with visual search
- Experience with active learning or human-in-the-loop pipelines
- Experience with low-latency API serving at scale
- Experience as a first machine learning hire at a startup
What We Do
Fruition Executive Search is a boutique executive search firm based in San Francisco. They specialize in sourcing high-caliber leadership talent across various industries, including Accounting, Finance, AI, Software, and Healthcare. Utilizing a dual approach of retained and contingent search, they connect organizations with C-suite and management professionals equipped to drive strategic direction, profitability, and digital transformation through human-centered leadership.
