Early-stage founding-engineer hire to build and scale Safari AI's computer vision platform: lead product development, design data pipelines, deploy reliable cloud services, deliver incremental features, maintain production reliability, and ensure SDLC and security best practices while engaging enterprise customers.
About Safari AI
Safari AI's vision is to Automate Action of the leading companies in the physical economy, from Entertainment, Live Venues, QSR's, Retail and beyond. The company uses computer vision AI to Measure, Alert and provide AI-generated Recommendations at the operations of leading enterprises such as Merlin/Legoland, 7-11, Tanger Outlets, Charlotte Hornets, Calgary Flames, and more. This year, Safari AI's platform will begin to use this data and to suggest to clients how they can optimize their operations to generate higher throughput, more revenue and optimize staff deployment.
Safari AI is venture-funded and expects to raise its Series A in 2026.
Leadership & Culture
Safari AI is co-founded by Ali Vahabzadeh & Kaiwen Yuan, two leaders who have meaningful exits under their belts and have managed large, high-performing Go To Market and Engineering teams. The company is headquartered in Miami with the Engineering team based in Vancouver with some distributed team members.
About You And How You Succeed At Safari AI
You're excited about building a product and creating a market that hasn't been done before. You have a strong bias toward action when you are stuck but are not afraid to ask for help when you need to. You're a high agency contributor, eager to test new ways of doing things and take advantage of the freedom and culture an early stage startup can afford you. You want to lead the company's engagement with category leaders in a variety of industries, solving some of their biggest challenges.
We always welcome unicorn engineering talents to join us!
This opportunity hire is specifically for ex-founder or ex-founding engineer!
What you must have
- previous startup founding team (founder or founding engineer) experiences
- previous big enterprise experiences
- depth knowledge in modern AI and data engineering
- at least 5-8 years software individual contributor experiences
- proficiency in cloud infrastructure
- proven record of leadership on building a complex service from scratch to production
- experiences in delivering incremental features and maintaining reliabilities of a production service
- good understanding in best practices in software development lifecycle (SDLC) and security compliance
What we provide
- Opportunity to shape an early-stage, mission-driven startup and revolutionize how Enterprises use Computer Vision
- Professional growth at a fast-growing, venture-funded start up with a proven founder and leadership team
- Competitive salary and meaningful equity for early team members
- Unlimited vacation days
- Generous health benefits (Health, Vision, Dental)
- 401k for US team members
- Brand new, top of the line hardware and whatever else you need to help you win
We are not considering any agent/agency and only matched candidates will be reached out.
Please provide your Linkedin and github link.
Why bet on Computer Vision and Safari AI?
- Huge opportunity hiding in plain sight: leveraging already-installed cameras to automate and real-time action on operational data
- Already the market leader in enterprise CV by working with industry leaders with billions in revenue
- Large chasm between customer knowledge and market availability, i.e. customers don't know what is available in the market...yet.
- Early leader in computer vision; everyone is small and unbranded (i.e. no Amazon or Google in the room to compete with)
- Very modular, allowing Safari AI and its customers to invent whole new use cases on a regular basis
- Developed the tech and data pipelines over three years and invested several million dollars and is now ready to scale
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What you need to know about the Chicago Tech Scene
With vibrant neighborhoods, great food and more affordable housing than either coast, Chicago might be the most liveable major tech hub. It is the birthplace of modern commodities and futures trading, a national hub for logistics and commerce, and home to the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association. This diverse blend of industry influences has helped Chicago emerge as a major player in verticals like fintech, biotechnology, legal tech, e-commerce and logistics technology. It’s also a major hiring center for tech companies on both coasts.
Key Facts About Chicago Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 245,800; 5.2% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
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