Founding Engineer

About Ultralytics:

At Ultralytics https://ultralytics.com/, we commit to relentless innovation in the AI space and seek team members https://www.ultralytics.com/about who resonate with our ambition to produce the world's best YOLO AI models https://ultralytics.com/yolo. If you're obsessed with AI, eager to make an impact on the world, and thrive in dynamic, high-intensity environments, we invite you to apply for a position on our team.

🌍 Join the team powering the future of vision AI Hello, hola, 你好, こんにちは, नमस्ते, hallo, bonjour! Thanks for stopping by — we know your time is valuable, so here's what makes Ultralytics special.

⚡ Who we are At Ultralytics https://www.ultralytics.com/, we're on a mission to simplify AI for everyone. As the creators of the world's leading Ultralytics YOLO models https://github.com/ultralytics/ultralytics, we empower millions of developers, researchers, and companies worldwide to build state-of-the-art computer vision applications.

Following our $30M Series A round https://www.ultralytics.com/news/ultralytics-raises-30m-series-a, we're expanding rapidly across our global hubs in New York London, Madrid, and Shenzhen. This is an opportunity to join a fast-scaling, high-performance team that's redefining the future of vision AI — where ambition meets impact, and ideas become reality.

We move fast. We build boldly. We execute with purpose. And we do it together.

💼 About the role As Founding Engineer, you'll help establish our New York engineering team, shipping features across the YOLO https://docs.ultralytics.com/models ML/computer vision surface and the platform around it. You'll connect model capabilities with usable interfaces, reliable APIs, and production infrastructure.

“Founding” means end-to-end ownership, not a queue of assigned tickets. You'll define scope, make architectural decisions, write and review code, deploy changes, and own production outcomes.

This is a hands-on senior engineer with tech-lead responsibility, not a people-management requirement. You'll use AI coding tools daily and coordinate with colleagues in the UK, Spain, and China through clear plans, async communication, and accountable delivery.

🚀 What you'll do Strategy & execution

• Own a feature area from requirements and architecture through implementation, testing, deployment, and iteration.

• Ship ML/CV capabilities alongside full-stack interfaces, backend services, and infrastructure, using our documentation https://docs.ultralytics.com/ and guides https://docs.ultralytics.com/guides.

• Use Copilot https://github.com/features/copilot or Codex https://openai.com/codex/ routinely, validating generated code for correctness, security, and maintainability.

Cross-functional collaboration

• Break ambiguous work into milestones, align dependencies across locations, and communicate decisions and blockers asynchronously.

• Balance customer needs, technical trade-offs, and commercial deadlines with Product and Engineering.

Representation & leadership

• Lead design and code reviews, unblock engineers, and set standards for testing, observability, and production reliability.

• Strengthen our open-source ecosystem https://github.com/ultralytics through maintainable contributions, technical documentation, and engineering knowledge-sharing.

🧠 Skills and experience Core requirements

• Senior-to-principal/distinguished-level industry delivery, with sustained ownership of feature areas and tech-lead-level accountability.

• Shipped ML/AI and computer vision work, with practical Python https://www.python.org/ and PyTorch https://pytorch.org/ proficiency beyond coursework or research.

• Full-stack capability spanning user interfaces, APIs, databases, cloud infrastructure, deployment, and production operations.

• Current AI-assisted development experience, sound review judgment, and a preference for mainstream, well-documented tools.

• Strong async communication, work breakdown, and deadline delivery within structured teams; no degree required, but industry experience is essential.

Nice to have

• Production experience with TypeScript https://www.typescriptlang.org/, React, and Python API frameworks such as FastAPI.

• Experience with PostgreSQL, Docker https://www.docker.com/, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, and cloud platforms.

• Hands-on model serving, GPU optimization, inference monitoring, or edge deployment experience.

• Contributions to Ultralytics or other open-source projects and engagement with our developer community https://community.ultralytics.com/.

• Early engineering experience building products and establishing technical practices across international teams.

🌟 Cultural fit At Ultralytics, we set bold goals and execute with speed, precision, and teamwork. We're driven by hard work, ambition, and resilience — building fast, learning constantly, and delivering measurable impact.

You'll thrive here if you:

• Take ownership and deliver results with focus and accountability.

• Combine strategic thinking with hands-on execution.

• Value excellence, grit, and creativity in equal measure.

• See collaboration as the foundation for meaningful progress.

Our culture is built around our core values:

• Relentless progress: Constant evolution and improvement.

• Strive for excellence: Perseverance and attention to detail.

• Actions, not words: Focus on delivering meaningful results.

• Act with urgency: Seize fleeting opportunities.

• Open access to all: Transparent communication and collaboration.

Learn more in our Ultralytics Handbook https://handbook.ultralytics.com/mission-vision-values/#values.

💰 Compensation and benefits We reward excellence and impact — not just tenure or title.

• Competitive salary: Reflecting your experience and contribution.

• Equity packages: We want our success to be yours too.

• On-site collaboration: Work with passionate builders in one of our global hubs.

• Flexible working hours: We value results over routines.

• Gene