VLM & VFM Forward Deployed Engineer at Matroid in Palo Alto, CA

About Matroid

Matroid is a full-service computer vision company that has developed an end-to-end platform allowing enterprise customers to rapidly train and deploy automated visual inspection on imagery, including EO, IR, X-Ray, CT, OCT, and others.

Founded in 2016 by a Stanford professor, Matroid serves a broad and rapidly growing customer base across manufacturing, automotive, logistics, aerospace, data center infrastructure, and security.

We’re looking for a Vision Language Model (VLM) & Visual Foundation Model (VFM) Forward Deployed Engineer to operate at the forefront of visual and multi-modal intelligence deployment in industry, building best-in-class AI systems that leverage vision-centric and vision-language models to solve a broad range of challenging real-world use cases, such as defect inspection, anomaly detection, assembly verification, process and safety monitoring, multi-modal understanding, retrieval, and reasoning over large collections of images, videos, operational data.

You’ll be working at our new office in downtown Palo Alto, just a five-minute walk from the Caltrain station and a nine-minute walk from Stanford University.

What you’ll be doing

• Train and deploy state-of-the-art vision-centric and vision-language models across a broad range of industrial domains, including manufacturing, automotive, logistics, aerospace, data center infrastructure, security, and more.
• Deploy end-to-end CV systems across a range of environments (cloud, edge, hybrid).
• Define benchmarks and perform quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the AI systems, including accuracy, reliability, latency, throughput, and/or robustness, and then iterate to meet production requirements.
• Design and develop industrial-grade imaging systems for high-quality, consistent data collection.
• Integrate Matroid into customer workflows and systems, such as manufacturing execution systems, PLCs, SCADA systems, quality management systems, safety alert systems, and video management systems, with common industrial protocols.
• Act as the technical expert, advising on all matters from technical scoping of engagements to model adaptation, deployment architecture, evaluation, integration, and customer enablement.
• Empower customers with AI by designing and leading product training sessions, technical workshops, and deployment playbooks.

How you’ll be doing it

• You will be a computer vision and multi-modal AI guru, intelligently translating real-world business problems into performant computer vision and/or vision language solutions.
• You will be a SOTA model adapter, selecting, fine-tuning, prompting, evaluating, and orchestrating the right models for the task at hand.
• You will be a product expert, deeply understanding Matroid’s platform and applying the right features, models, workflows, and integrations to solve customer problems.
• You will be a customer advocate, understanding customers’ operational requirements and relaying feedback to the broader Matroid team to drive customer-centric development.
• You will be an AI orchestrator, integrating robust and efficient deep learning systems with third-party systems to deliver real-world impact.
• You will operate in a collaborative yet highly autonomous environment that isn’t bogged down by unnecessary meetings or project management overhead.
• You will learn a lot along the way, diving into new technologies and the world of computer vision and multi-modal AI, both on your own and during frequent company tech talks.

What you bring to the table

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or another technical field.
• Experience working with modern visual recognition models, including object detection, segmentation, tracking, action recognition, anomaly detection, and/or vision-language models for multi-modal understanding, reasoning, and retrieval.
• Strong Python coding skills, with the ability to build reliable systems that interact with various models, APIs, databases, customer infrastructure, and production workflows.
• Experience with popular machine learning and computer vision frameworks and tools, such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, Hugging Face, Numpy, OpenCV, or similar technologies.
• Strong ability to evaluate AI systems rigorously, including designing benchmarks, analyzing failure modes, and improving model performance through data, prompts, architecture, or workflow design.
• Solid oral, written, presentation, collaboration, and interpersonal communication skills.
• Adept at communicating with both technical and commercial audiences.

Bonus points if...

• Graduate degree with a concentration in computer vision, artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, robotics, or related fields.
• Previous work experience in forward-deployed engineering, field engineering, professional services, consulting, solutions engineering, or another customer-facing technical role.
• Experience deploying AI systems in industrial, manufacturing, aerospace, logistics, security, or other operational environments.
• Experience with complex computer vision and vision language tasks, like spatial-temporal reasoning, open-world visual recognition, 3D visual understanding/reconstruction, or agentic workflows.
• Experience with high-growth technology startups.

What we offer in return

• Competitive pay and equity.
• The chance to constantly work on stimulating intellectual challenges.
• Gym membership reimbursement.
• Free lunch, healthy drinks, and snacks every day.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance with 100% paid premiums.
• A flexible schedule that leaves time for all of your other interests.
• A budget for whatever hardware or software will make you most effective.
• Resources to learn about the cutting edge of software engineering, computer vision, VLMs, LLMs, and multi-modal AI.
• You’ll be working at our new office in downtown Palo Alto, just a five-minute walk from the Caltrain station.

Matroid is committed to creating a diverse work environment and is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, non-disqualifying physical or mental disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other basis covered by appropriate law.