Founding AI Engineer - YC AI Video Production Startup
Bounty Amount: €8,000 - €13,000
Company Name: Hera
Role Type: Full-time
Location: Berlin, Germany (On-site Strongly preferred) (Remote possible from New York, NY or San Francisco, CA)
Salary / Hourly Rate: €80,000 - €130,000 per year
Benefits: 0.75% - 1.50% Equity
Role Information
Role Overview: N/A
Responsibilities: Build and optimize AI systems that generate high-quality animations following motion design principles such as easing, non-linear movement, and visual hierarchy., Develop evaluation frameworks to measure animation quality using both automated metrics and expert motion design feedback., Collaborate with motion designers and marketers to translate professional design knowledge into AI training data and evaluation criteria., Design and implement fine-tuning pipelines to teach models domain-specific animation styles and brand guidelines., Create feedback loops between user preferences, expert input, and model performance to continuously improve animation quality., Research and prototype new approaches for controllable and style-consistent motion graphics generation.
Qualifications: 3+ years of experience in machine learning, AI engineering, or related engineering roles., Strong experience working with AI/ML systems or generative models., Ability to build production-ready ML systems and pipelines., Experience working in fast-paced startup environments or shipping production software., Strong programming and problem-solving skills.
Minimum Requirements: Proven experience working with or within a top high-growth startup or elite technology company (examples: top YC startups, Palantir, Stripe, Ramp, Notion, Figma, Scale AI, Anduril, etc.).,Strong programming ability in modern languages used for AI or backend development.,Experience working with machine learning systems or generative AI models.,Ability to operate independently and take ownership of technical projects.
Screening Questions: (Optional) Record a short 2–3 minute Loom introducing yourself and describing the most interesting AI or ML system you’ve built.,(Optional) Please share your GitHub, portfolio, or links to ML projects you’ve worked on.,Hera generates animations using AI while maintaining motion design principles like easing and visual hierarchy. How would you design a system to evaluate whether generated animations meet professional motion design standards?
Company Information
About Company: N/A
Culture: N/A
Additional Information
Interview Process: Intro call with the founders, Technical discussion and system design conversation, Practical technical exercise or ML discussion, Final founder interview
Day to day: Building and improving generative AI models for animation creation, Developing evaluation pipelines for animation quality, Collaborating with motion designers to translate design knowledge into ML systems, Experimenting with new approaches for controllable generative media, Shipping AI features directly into the product
Team: This role works directly with the founders and engineering team.Hera operates as a small founding team, so engineers will have significant ownership over product and technical decisions.
Growth: As a founding engineer, this role offers the opportunity to shape the technical foundation of the company and help define the AI systems powering the product.Future growth could include Staff AI Engineer or Head of AI roles as the team expands.
Ideal Candidate Profile: Highly ambitious builder excited about founding-stage startups, Passionate about generative AI and creative tools, Comfortable solving ambiguous technical challenges, Interested in working closely with founders to build a category-defining product, Motivated by ownership and impact
