Founding Senior AI Engineer | Hands-On, 0-to-1 Builder — KETUPA, Bellevue, WA

Company Description KETUPA helps e-commerce brands choose, launch, and improve AI shopping solutions by partnering with established AI commerce platforms to deliver the right capabilities for each business. The company focuses on pre-purchase shopping and guided selling, enabling AI agents to understand customer needs, guide product discovery, compare options, recommend suitable products, and support purchasing decisions. KETUPA manages merchant-specific implementation, shopping workflows, product knowledge, testing, and continuous optimization so merchants can benefit from AI without building their own AI teams. The team is also developing software to make AI implementation, optimization, and operations more efficient and scalable. KETUPA’s leadership brings senior AI and engineering experience from companies such as Microsoft and Amazon, offering a strong foundation for innovation and growth.

Role Description The Founding Senior AI Engineer (Hands-On) role is a full-time, on-site position based in Bellevue, WA. This role involves designing, building, and deploying AI-based shopping and guided selling solutions that integrate with leading AI commerce platforms. Day-to-day responsibilities include developing and training models for pattern recognition and natural language understanding, creating merchant-specific workflows, and implementing robust, scalable software components. The engineer will collaborate closely with product and merchant stakeholders to translate business requirements into technical solutions, run experiments, evaluate performance, and iterate on AI agents to improve customer experience and conversion. As a founding team member, this role also includes establishing engineering best practices, contributing to the architecture of KETUPA’s internal software platform, and helping shape the company’s AI strategy and culture.

Qualifications

• Strong foundation in Computer Science, with depth in algorithms, data structures, and systems design.

• Hands-on expertise in Neural Networks and Pattern Recognition for real-world AI applications.

• Experience with Natural Language Processing (NLP), including building and integrating language models into production systems.

• Proven Software Development skills in modern languages (e.g., Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, or similar), and familiarity with cloud-native architectures.

• Ability to design, train, and evaluate machine learning models, and to work with modern ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, or similar).

• Experience building end-to-end AI products or platforms, preferably in e-commerce, retail, or customer-facing applications.

• Comfort working in a founding or early-stage environment, with a willingness to own projects end-to-end and work across disciplines.

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work closely with non-technical stakeholders and merchants.