Astrocade is seeking an ML Engineer to join its team in Palo Alto to build agentic systems that transform natural language ideas into playable interactive experiences. This position suits an experienced machine learning professional who wants to ship applied AI directly to a massive consumer platform with millions of active users.
Role Overview
Astrocade builds a social user-generated content platform powered by interactive world models. The incoming engineer will oversee the behavior of the creation system, analyze failure points, create evaluation frameworks, and design agentic architectures. Working within a compact engineering group, the professional in this role collaborates closely with co-founders and the CTO across models, agents, infrastructure, and data pipelines.
Key Responsibilities
Take ownership of AI-generated content quality from end to end, covering model behavior, prompt handling, agent orchestration, tool utilization, and failure recovery
Construct evaluation and insight pipelines using production creator data to measure quality, track failure rates, and translate insights into tangible system enhancements
Architect and implement agentic machine learning systems that take raw creator concepts and reliably generate playable games
Troubleshoot complex issues across the technical stack, isolating problems down to underlying models, data pipelines, or generation processes
Execute rapid experiments, evaluate results rigorously, and deploy functional solutions to production
Shape operational standards, evaluation criteria, and technical direction as the engineering organization expands
Requirements
Three to seven or more years of professional background in applied machine learning or ML engineering, backed by a history of delivering AI systems to real users
Production experience building LLM-driven or agentic architectures, treating evaluation metrics as a primary responsibility
Robust computer science fundamentals with the ability to write clean, efficient code, heavily focused on Python
Solid reasoning skills regarding statistics and probability
High agency and a strong bias toward action with a desire to own outcomes
Familiarity with the Astrocade platform alongside informed opinions regarding its content
Nice to Have
Background in program synthesis, code generation, or LLM-for-code applications
Prior tenure at a fast-paced artificial intelligence startup or within applied ML groups at consumer-focused organizations
Personal or professional interest in user-generated content, creator ecosystems, or gaming
Experience with fine-tuning or post-training methodologies
Skills and Tools
Python
LLMs
Agentic systems
Evaluation frameworks
Data pipelines
Salary and Benefits
Annual salary ranging from $200K to $300K, supplemented by equity offerings and performance bonuses
Comprehensive 100% employer-funded medical, dental, and vision coverage for staff members and eligible dependents
Flexible paid time off and unlimited sick leave
Monthly allowances including $650 for AI tools, $500 for lifestyle benefits, $200 for fun, and $200 for commuting expenses
Up to 16 weeks of paid parental leave for birth parents and 12 weeks for non-birth parents, plus a $1,500 monthly childcare stipend
Initial $2,000 workspace setup allowance
Daily catered breakfast, lunch, and dinner during in-office days, accompanied by regular company events and offsites
401(k) retirement plan administered through Human Interest
About the Company
Astrocade is an artificial intelligence technology firm creating super-intelligence for the interactive space through a consumer platform. The team comprises talent originating from Stanford, Google Research, Meta, FAIR, and Character.ai, led alongside Fei-Fei Li. The organization receives backing from prominent investors including Sequoia Capital, Google, NVIDIA, Eric Schmidt, and Jerry Yang.
How to Apply
Interested candidates should apply on the official company careers page.
