Technical Strategic Projects Lead

AfterQuery is seeking exceptional technical candidates for our Technical Strategic Projects Lead position. This is not a typical job – you'll work directly with our founding team on high-priority technical projects spanning AI research, product development, and engineering infrastructure.

Total Compensation: Up to $300K in cash comp in addition to equity

Company Overview

AfterQuery is a research lab investigating the boundaries and capabilities of artificial intelligence through novel datasets and experimentation. Our customers are the foundation model labs—we serve all of the frontier AI labs.

We are based in San Francisco, CA, and have raised funding from top investors, including Y Combinator and BoxGroup, ex-partners from Lightspeed and Index Ventures, and senior leadership at Google DeepMind and Meta GenAI.

Our founding team brings backgrounds from Jane Street, Meta, Citadel Securities, Google, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Silver Lake, Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR), and Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL).

Why Apply

Massive Opportunity: We were one of the fastest growing YC companies in our batch, and we believe we can be one of the fastest growing YC companies of all time

Founding role —own critical technical initiatives from day one with significant equity upside

Equity & Growth – Competitive salary + meaningful equity in a fast-scaling company

Strong Team: You get to work with the best :)

The Opportunity

• Work at the intersection of cutting-edge AI research and technical execution
• Direct collaboration with frontier AI labs on next-generation datasets and research
• Mission-driven, fast-moving culture that prizes curiosity, pragmatism, and excellence
• Broad technical scope—build tools, analyze data, ship product features, and drive technical strategy

Responsibilities

• Work closely with the world’s leading AI labs to generate next generation datasets to push the boundaries of AI to the limits, directly generating revenue for the company
• Manage teams of technical experts across a wide variety of domains, like software engineering, data science, and machine learning
• Build technical infrastructure and tooling to support dataset generation, quality control, and delivery pipelines
• Drive technical and operational initiatives end-to-end: scoping requirements, building solutions, and managing technical experts
• Interface directly with engineering and research teams at leading AI labs
• Support the founding team on high-priority technical projects and operational initiatives

Required Qualifications

• Strong technical background: CS degree, engineering experience, or equivalent demonstrated ability to ship technical projects
• Eagerness to manage experts for technical human data campaigns
• Intense work ethic, agency, and drive
• Proficiency in Python and comfort writing production-quality code
• Experience with data pipelines, APIs, or ML/AI tooling
• Passion for AI and demonstrated interest in frontier AI research
• Competitive nature and track record of exceptional achievement
• Strong leadership experience and communication skills
• Ability to context-switch rapidly between technical and strategic work

Preferred Qualifications

• Background in software engineering, ML engineering, AI research, or computer science
• Experience at a top tech company (FAANG, frontier AI lab) or quantitative trading firm
• Prior startup experience or founding experience
• Willingness to work long hours and weekends when projects demand it