Associate AI Engineer, Physical AI

The Opportunity

We are looking for exceptional new computer science graduates who are builders at heart, writing software, conducting research, building ambitious projects, or pushing technology beyond what they’ve learned in the classroom. As an Associate AI Engineer, you will join Avathon’s AI Engineering team and work alongside AI researchers, applied scientists, and engineers to build the intelligence behind our Physical AI platform. You will work on hard technical problems spanning agentic AI, machine learning, reasoning, knowledge graphs, multimodal AI, time-series intelligence, optimization, and autonomous decision-making.

What You'll Work On

· Build physical AI: Develop intelligent systems that can understand complex operating environments, reason over real-world context, predict what happens next, and determine what actions should be taken

· Build AI agents: Develop and evaluate agentic systems capable of reasoning, planning, using tools, interacting with enterprise and operational systems, and executing multi-step workflows

· Advance machine intelligence: Build models and algorithms across prediction, anomaly detection, forecasting, classification, optimization, recommendation, and decision intelligence

· Build knowledge & reasoning systems: Work with Avathon’s computational knowledge graph to give AI an understanding of relationships across assets, processes, materials, suppliers, operations, and complex industrial systems

· Explore multimodal AI: Apply LLMs, vision models, time-series models, retrieval, and multimodal techniques across sensor signals, documents, images, video, engineering information, and enterprise data

· Develop autonomous decision systems: Help move AI beyond prediction toward reasoning, prescription, optimization, planning, and increasingly autonomous action

· Take AI from research to production: Turn promising algorithms, models, and prototypes into reliable, scalable AI systems capable of operating against large and complex real-world datasets

· Experiment at the frontier: Rapidly prototype and evaluate emerging AI architectures, models, and techniques and determine where they can create meaningful advantages within Avathon’s platform

· Engineer for the real world: Solve challenges involving scale, latency, reliability, model performance, explainability, and deployment where AI outputs can influence real operational decisions

· Own real problems early: Work alongside Product and Forward Engineering teams on difficult customer and platform problems, with meaningful technical ownership from the start of your career

What We’re Looking For:

· Bachelor’s degree in computer science from a leading computer science and engineering university; graduating in 2027

· Strong academic achievement, with a cumulative undergraduate GPA of 3.6 or higher required

· No prior full-time professional experience required

· Exceptional foundation in algorithms, data structures, software engineering, probability, statistics, linear algebra, and computer science fundamentals

· Strong programming ability, particularly in Python, with the ability to write high-quality, maintainable software

· Strong understanding of machine learning and modern AI fundamentals, developed through coursework, research, internships, independent projects, or hands-on experimentation

· Experience or demonstrated interest in areas such as LLMs, deep learning, agentic AI, computer vision, NLP, reinforcement learning, optimization, knowledge graphs, robotics, or autonomous systems

· Familiarity with modern AI/ML frameworks and a demonstrated ability to rapidly learn new models, tools, and technical concepts

· Evidence that you build beyond the classroom through research, technically ambitious personal projects, open-source contributions, hackathons, competitive programming, startups, or other engineering work

· Intellectual curiosity about how AI can interact with and ultimately reason about the physical world

· High ownership and a desire to work in an environment where technical ambition, speed, experimentation, and execution are expected

What You'll Learn

Your first few years as an engineer can shape the trajectory of your career. At Avathon, our goal is to give exceptional early-career engineers exposure to problems and responsibilities that are difficult to find elsewhere. You will develop a powerful combination of AI depth, software engineering rigor, systems thinking, product judgment, and understanding of complex physical operations. You will learn how frontier AI moves from research and experimentation into production and how intelligent systems progress from prediction to reasoning, optimization, decision-making, and autonomous action. If you want your first job to be about building what comes next in AI, come build the intelligence layer for the physical world with us.

Compensation & Benefits

· California base salary range: $110,000 – $130,000 USD (based on experience)

· Equity in the form of stock options

· Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage

· 401(k) participation

· Generous PTO and company holidays

· Ongoing learning and development opportunities

Avathon is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, pregnancy, genetic information, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other protected category under applicable federal, state, and local laws.

Avathon is committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruiting process. If you need a reasonable accommodation, please contact us to discuss how we can assist you.