Senior AI Developer

About the Role We are hiring a Senior AI Developer who is passionate about electronics. You'll play an early and foundational role building the AI tools at the heart of Cadstrom – from LLM-based pipelines that extract structured component data from manufacturer datasheets, to AI-driven validation of customer circuits, to self-improving systems that get smarter every time they run. The work is detail-dense and multi-modal: graphs, tables, cross-referenced text, and parameters buried deep in application notes. You'll drive our experimentation framework end-to-end, dig deep into failure modes, and ship incremental improvements that compound over time. We move fast – the product is shipping, customers are live, and every week matters. This is a high-ownership role for a detail-obsessed AI developer who treats Cadstrom's outcome as their own. What are we doing? We are accelerating the world's hardware ingenuity by blending generative AI, ML, and novel deterministic approaches to electronics simulation and validation. We're providing our enthusiastic customers intelligent and automated access to the most advanced validation tools for catching design errors before they reach fab – helping engineers of all levels deliver their designs faster, cheaper, and with less waste. Who are we? We are a small team of innovators who are passionate about fundamentally improving how electrical engineers deliver electronics with higher confidence. We are backed by Bison Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, and the Allen Institute for AI's Incubator. Our distinguished founders are responsible for creating the largest product development firm in the US, and building Azure Quantum (and more!) at Microsoft. We know you'll be in good company. Key Responsibilities Manage highly automated AI flows for data extraction from electrical component datasheets. Build AI pipelines that perform validations on customer circuits, integrating retrieval, agentic systems that think like a seasoned EE, and deterministic checks into trustworthy end-to-end flows. Build benchmarking pipelines and evaluation tooling that electrical engineering domain experts use to analyze, calibrate, and improve our AI systems. Design and ship self-improving systems exposed to our customers – closing the loop between production signal, evaluation, and model and prompt improvements. Build and optimize tools (MCP-based or otherwise) for AI agents, ensuring agents can reliably interact with Cadstrom's platform and data. Diagnose failure modes by digging into model outputs and traces, documenting root causes, and proposing fixes at the data, prompt, or schema level. Partner closely with electrical engineers to internalize domain conventions and translate that understanding into better prompts, schemas, and evaluations. Required Qualifications 3-4 years of hands-on experience in AI/ML or applied data engineering with shipped work in production or active pilot. Practical experience with LLMs (prompt engineering, few-shot/ICL, RAG, or agentic patterns) and interest in multi-modal inputs (PDFs, tables, figures). TypeScript experience – typing, packaging, services, and automated tests. Strong grasp of experiment design: reproducibility, significance, appropriate metrics, and ground-truth curation. Git proficiency and collaborative dev habits (peer reviews, readable self-documenting code). Meticulous attention to detail in debugging and root-cause analysis. Excellent written and visual communication; you summarize messy problems crisply and use plots and figures to convey insights. Undergraduate degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related STEM field. Preferred Qualifications Experience building and optimizing tools (MCP-based or otherwise) for use by AI agents. Electronics fundamentals (e.g. interpreting a datasheet) via coursework or hobbyist experience. Retrieval (vector DBs), chunking/embedding strategies, and context budgeting. LLM-ops platforms (LangSmith, LangFuse, DSPy). Data pipelines in a cloud environment (AWS/GCP/Azure). Startup experience, or a research-based Master's in a STEM field. Based in Montreal or the GTA Personal Qualities Detail-obsessed. You notice what others miss – in model outputs, in datasheets, in code – and you chase it down. Bias to action with high ownership. You don't wait for perfect information; you make calls with what you have and adjust, treating Cadstrom's outcome as your own. Disciplined experimenter. You hold hypotheses loosely and the scientific method tightly. Evidence changes your mind. Clear communicator. You write to be understood and reach for a plot or table when words won't do. Embraces the ethos of "We, not I." Why you'll love working with us Early Stage Equity Package – We want owners, not employees. You'll receive meaningful early-stage equity in a high-growth company, because we want you to share in what we build. Impact – You'll have the chance to make a significant impact not only for our customers, but on how the industry as a whole approaches test and validation. Care – we believe strongly in caring for each other. We encourage our people to bring their whole selves to work, support each other, and ensure they are happy in and out of the workplace. Leading benefits - we invest deeply in the health and wellbeing of our team with leading startup benefits, 0% co-pay across the board, and a $2k/year HSA. World-Class Backers – Cadstrom is backed by world-class investors: Bison Ventures (Bill Gates), Innovation Endeavors (Eric Schmidt), and the Allen Institute for AI (Paul Allen). All are Welcome. We are committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive environment. We are actively working to create an environment of mutual respect where equal opportunities are available to all employees without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, pregnancy, national origin, age, physical and mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information, military and veteran status, and any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We believe that diversity and inclusion among our founders and employees are critical to the success of our company.