# Founding Machine Learning Engineer at Shepherd

- Company: Shepherd
- What the company does: The all-in-one learning co-pilot. Backed by Y Combinator.
- Company website: https://www.shepherd.study
- Type: Startups (AI role)
- Level: Mid level
- Location: San Francisco
- Work setup: On-site
- Pay: $180K to $220K base salary per year (USD)
- Posted: 2026-04-02
- Apply by: 2026-10-08
- Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/shepherd/797316b4-bdcc-4c0c-8bc2-46d4648db240
- Page: https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/shepherd-founding-machine-learning-engineer/

## About the role

You will be Shepherd’s first Machine Learning Engineer, embedded in the Fully Autonomous Underwriting (FAU) team. This is a high-ownership, high-ambiguity role. There is no existing ML platform to inherit, no established model registry to maintain. You will build those things. You have the opportunity to define the ML function from the ground up at a company building something genuinely new in a large, underserved market

## What they're looking for

- 4+ years of industry experience building and shipping ML systems end-to-end, from raw data to production models, including experience with model deployment platforms (e.g., AWS Sagemaker)
- Experience finetuning SLMs/LLMs, with a preference for experience using techniques like RLHF, DPO, or LoRA
- Deep proficiency in Python and modern ML frameworks (PyTorch, HuggingFace, Tensorflow, OpenAI Gym/Gymnasium or similar)
- Experience with LLMs in production: prompt engineering, structured outputs, tool use, evaluation, and cost/latency tradeoffs
- Experience building reliable models with limited labeled data, including synthetic data generation, data augmentation, or similar techniques"
- Strong evaluation instincts: you know how to define what ‘better’ means before you build, not after

Tags: EPD