Senior Associate Builder

AI Fund

• $185K — $225K *
Consumer Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5-7 years of hands-on experience with AI technologies
  • Background in engineering, product management, product design, or go-to-market roles
  • Proven experience in building General AI applications like LLMs or RAG
  • Familiarity with AI coding tools such as Claude Code and Codex
  • Strong analytical skills with a systemic approach to problem-solving
  • STEM or research degree from a top university or equivalent experience

Responsibilities

  • Collaborate with partners to identify and validate new business ideas
  • Rapidly prototype solutions to address key market questions
  • Conduct user research to gather feedback and insights
  • Assist partners and founders during the 12-week Build phase
  • Present findings on prototypes and market signals to teams and founders
  • Stay informed on AI advancements to integrate new knowledge into projects

Benefits

  • Long-term incentives including carried interest and virtual shares in AI Fund
Full Job Description
Mountain View, CA | AI Fund | Full-time

A Senior Associate Builder finds out fast whether an idea has real demand. The core of the role is build velocity: rapidly prototyping in a new space, putting it in front of users, and turning their feedback into market signal that AI Fund, our partners, and our founders use to make bets. Your job is to validate or falsify ideas quickly and honestly.

What you'll do

  • Work with commercial partners, including corporates, VCs, and LPs, and with elite founders to identify, shape, and validate new company ideas.
  • Build prototypes that answer the open question about an idea. Start with the simplest design that works and add complexity only when the evidence calls for it.
  • Put prototypes in front of users, run user research, and turn what you hear into clear market signal.
  • Support partners and founders during the 12-week Build with hands-on product design and go-to-market work.
  • Present what you learned to the team and to potential founders: what worked, what failed, and what they need to decide next.
  • Stay at the frontier by reading papers, model cards, and technical writeups, and fold what you learn into the next build.


What you need

  • Technical ability, a real understanding of frontier AI, and hands-on experience coding with AI.
  • Experience as an engineer, product manager, product designer, or in go-to-market.
  • Hands-on experience building GenAI applications, such as LLM calls, RAG, agentic workflows, and evals.
  • Skill with AI coding tools like Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex, directing them to ship working software while you own the quality bar.
  • The judgment to write scrappy, disposable code for a fast prototype and clean code when it needs to last.
  • Personal experience and interest in building, hacking, and prototyping.
  • The ability to communicate with rigor and back your views with analysis.
  • A STEM or research degree from a top research university, or an equivalent background where you've built the same rigor.


Who this is for

  • Someone with real intellectual range who gets up to speed on a new space quickly and makes everyone around them smarter about it.
  • A builder who ships MVPs fast and still builds on weekends because staying at the frontier is what they'd do anyway.


$185,000 - $225,000 a year

Long-term incentives, including carried interest and virtual shares in AI Fund.

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