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Co-Founder & CTO

CleraSan FranciscoEngineering
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Salary
Not listed
Job type
Full-time
Experience
Senior · 3+ yrs
Posted
10 Oct 2026
Status
Open · checked 7d ago

About this role

Based in San Francisco, Clera seeks a full-time Co-Founder and CTO to lead the technical direction of an AI-powered creative advertising startup. This on-site leadership position suits an experienced engineering leader ready to build infrastructure and research systems from the ground up in an early-stage environment.

Role Overview

Clera is hiring a technical co-founder and CTO to take ownership of the technical and research strategy. Working on-site in San Francisco, this role involves scaling an existing product into a proprietary training and evaluation platform that connects creative work with real-world performance metrics.

Key Responsibilities

Establish the technical and research strategy from current workflows to a proprietary training and evaluation platform.
Construct data infrastructure linking creative briefs, submissions, generation traces, decisions, feedback, and campaign outcomes.
Create systems designed to evaluate, rank, critique, generate, and improve creative assets.
Formulate allocation policies that guide campaign budgets and inform data collection.
Determine the implementation of frontier models, fine-tuning, post-training, reinforcement learning, and original research.
Construct dependable infrastructure for creator workflows, campaigns, experimentation, model training, and inference.
Establish benchmarks for data quality, consent, privacy, measurement, and model evaluation.
Hire and manage the initial engineering and research team while collaborating directly with creators and brands.

Requirements

Minimum of 3 years of relevant experience, featuring practical work creating preference or reward models such as RLHF, ranking, or evaluation systems.
Background in causal inference concerning observational data, including selection bias, off-policy evaluation, counterfactual analysis, or adaptive experimentation.
History of shipping consumer-facing products, constructing production machine learning infrastructure, and managing model, evaluation, or infrastructure programs completely.
Experience in ads, marketplaces, recommenders, or ranking systems linked to business outcomes, alongside familiarity with noisy, delayed, or subjective feedback.
Demonstrated technical leadership and hiring experience.
Prepared to work full-time, in person, as an equal co-founder in an early-stage setting.

Nice to Have

Familiarity with bandits, sequential allocation, multimodal systems, agents, or latent-variable modeling.

Skills and Tools

RLHF
Preference and reward models
Ranking and evaluation systems
Causal inference
Machine learning infrastructure
Frontier models
Reinforcement learning

Salary and Benefits

Equity of approximately 28% as a co-founder.
Cash compensation discussed according to circumstances and fit.

About the Company

Clera operates as an AI-powered creative advertising startup located in San Francisco, California, focusing on systems that learn from creative work and real-world performance.

How to Apply

Interested candidates should apply on the official company careers page.

Skills and tech stack

RLHFMachine Learning InfrastructureFrontier ModelsReinforcement LearningFine-tuning

Questions candidates ask

What is the location of this job?

This position is on-site in San Francisco, California.

What is the compensation offered for this role?

The position offers approximately 28% equity as a co-founder, with cash compensation discussed based on circumstances and fit.

Is visa sponsorship available for this position?

No, visa sponsorship is not available.

How many years of experience are required?

At least 3 years of relevant experience are required.

What is the employment type?

This is a full-time, in-person co-founder role.

Ready to apply?

The application is on the official Clera careers page.

Apply on company site