Founding AI Engineer (India)
Valent · India
- Hybrid
- Full-time
- $120,000 / year
- India
Job highlights
- Build core AI intelligence layer for manufacturers.
- Focus on document understanding and workflow automation.
- Hands-on role in a dynamic startup environment.
- Opportunity to shape company's technical foundation.
- Remote role for experienced AI Engineers in India.
About the role
Founding AI Engineer at Valent
Valent is building AI workflow software for compliance-heavy manufacturers. Our initial focus is contract manufacturers and cosmetic manufacturers, where teams spend enormous amounts of time collecting supplier documents, preparing customer evidence packets, responding to retailer audits, and chasing down the information required to keep production and commercial relationships moving. These workflows are high-stakes, repetitive, fragmented across systems, and still heavily manual. Valent turns that operational burden into structured, auditable, AI-assisted workflows that help teams move faster without losing control.
About the Role
We are looking for an AI Engineer based in India who wants to build real enterprise software where AI is not a novelty layer, but a practical system for document understanding, workflow automation, retrieval, reasoning, and human review. As an AI Engineer at Valent, you will help design and build the core intelligence layer of the product. You will work across document extraction, retrieval, workflow orchestration, evaluation, agentic task execution, structured data generation, and user-facing AI features. This is a hands-on engineering role for someone who likes turning messy real-world business processes into reliable software. You should be excited by the challenge of making AI systems useful in environments where accuracy, traceability, and user trust matter. Because Valent is an early-stage company, this role is best suited for someone who is comfortable with ambiguity, communicates clearly in a remote environment, and can take ownership of technical problems without needing every detail specified upfront.
What You’ll Work On
You will help build systems that:
- Extract structured information from supplier documents, specifications, certificates, declarations, questionnaires, audit evidence, and regulatory files.
- Power AI-assisted workflows for document collection, evidence packet assembly, customer requests, and audit preparation.
- Use retrieval, ranking, and document understanding to help users find the right evidence across fragmented sources.
- Generate draft responses, summaries, checklists, and compliance artifacts that remain reviewable and auditable by humans.
- Build evaluation pipelines to measure quality, reduce hallucination, and improve reliability over time.
- Design AI workflows that know when to act autonomously and when to escalate to a human.
- Integrate AI features into a polished enterprise product experience.
What We’re Looking For
You may be a strong fit if you:
- Have strong software engineering fundamentals and experience shipping production systems.
- Have built with LLMs, retrieval systems, document AI, agents, or applied machine learning.
- Are comfortable working across the stack when needed.
- Can write clean, maintainable code and make sound technical tradeoffs.
- Care about reliability, observability, testing, and product quality.
- Can reason from first principles about when AI should automate, assist, or stay out of the way.
- Are interested in messy operational workflows, not just clean demos.
- Communicate clearly in writing and are comfortable working remotely.
- Can overlap for part of the day with U.S. Eastern Time.
- Want to join early and help shape the technical foundation of a company.
Helpful Experience
Experience with any of the following is valuable, but not required:
- LLM application development
- RAG systems and vector databases
- Document parsing, OCR, extraction, or classification
- Evaluation frameworks for AI systems
- Workflow automation or agentic systems
- Enterprise SaaS
- Compliance, supply chain, manufacturing, regulatory, or quality workflows
- React, TypeScript, Node.js, Python, Postgres, or cloud infrastructure
What Makes This Role Different
This is not a role focused on building generic chatbots. Valent is building AI for real operational work: collecting evidence, understanding documents, coordinating follow-ups, checking gaps, preparing for audits, and helping teams execute workflows that currently live across email, spreadsheets, shared drives, ERPs, and tribal knowledge. The right person will care about making AI systems that are accurate, useful, inspectable, and trusted by the people who rely on them.
Why Join
Work remotely from India on a U.S.-based enterprise AI product. Build AI into workflows where the value is operational, measurable, and immediate. Join early enough to have meaningful influence over architecture, product, and culture. Work on hard problems at the intersection of AI, enterprise workflow, compliance, and manufacturing. Help define what modern compliance operations software should look like.
How To Apply
Send your resume, LinkedIn profile, GitHub, portfolio, or anything else that shows how you think and build. We are especially interested in examples of products, systems, or AI workflows you have shipped. Please follow our LinkedIn company page so we know you are not a bot :)
Key skills/competency
- AI Engineering
- LLM Development
- Retrieval Systems
- Document AI
- Workflow Automation
- Agentic Systems
- Machine Learning
- Software Engineering
- Enterprise SaaS
- Compliance
Skills & topics
- AI Engineer
- Founding Engineer
- LLM
- Machine Learning
- Document AI
- Workflow Automation
- Retrieval Systems
- Software Engineering
- Enterprise SaaS
- Compliance
- India
- Remote
How to get hired
- Tailor your resume: Highlight experience with LLMs, retrieval systems, and production software.
- Showcase your work: Include links to shipped products, systems, or AI workflows.
- Demonstrate understanding: Emphasize your grasp of enterprise AI and operational workflows.
- Engage with Valent: Follow their LinkedIn page to show genuine interest.
- Prepare for ambiguity: Be ready to discuss how you handle complex, undefined problems.
Technical preparation
Behavioral questions
Frequently asked questions
- What is Valent and what do they do?
- Valent is an early-stage company building AI workflow software specifically for compliance-heavy manufacturers. Their goal is to transform manual, repetitive, and high-stakes operational burdens into structured, auditable, AI-assisted workflows, enabling teams to operate faster and with greater control.
- What is the primary focus of the Founding AI Engineer role at Valent?
- The Founding AI Engineer will design and build the core intelligence layer of Valent's product. This involves working across various AI domains like document extraction, retrieval, workflow orchestration, evaluation, and agentic task execution to create practical AI systems for enterprise use.
- What kind of AI applications does Valent focus on, as opposed to generic chatbots?
- Valent focuses on AI for real operational work, such as collecting evidence, understanding complex documents, coordinating follow-ups, identifying compliance gaps, preparing for audits, and executing workflows that are currently managed across disparate systems like email, spreadsheets, and ERPs. The emphasis is on accuracy, usability, inspectability, and user trust.
- Is this role suitable for someone who prefers clear, defined tasks?
- This role is best suited for individuals comfortable with ambiguity, as Valent is an early-stage company. The ideal candidate can take ownership of technical problems and drive solutions without needing every detail explicitly defined upfront, thriving in a dynamic startup environment.
- What are the key technical areas the AI Engineer will work with?
- The AI Engineer will work with document extraction, retrieval systems, workflow orchestration, evaluation pipelines, agentic task execution, structured data generation, and user-facing AI features. Experience with LLMs, document AI, and applied machine learning is highly valued.
- What is the expected technical background for this role?
- Strong software engineering fundamentals and experience shipping production systems are essential. Experience with LLMs, retrieval systems, document AI, agents, or applied machine learning is crucial. The role also requires the ability to work across the stack and write clean, maintainable code.
- What is the work arrangement and location for this Founding AI Engineer position?
- This is a fully remote position based in India. The team operates on a U.S. Eastern Time schedule, so candidates need to be able to overlap for part of the day.