Principal Software Engineer, Applied AI

CHAOS Inc. is a global technology company delivering next-generation capabilities to the defense and critical industrial sectors. Founded in 2022 by a seasoned leadership team, CHAOS has quickly become the place where world-class multi-disciplinary engineers come to build mission-critical technologies. CHAOS has a mission-focused culture, dedicated to solving the toughest technical challenges. Its unique agile engineering approach enables rapid prototyping, while deep partnerships with defense and industry ensure real-world solutions.

Role Overview:

Build AI for systems that detect and protect against next-generation arial threats in near real-time. Your models ship to the field in weeks not months, protecting critical infrastructure and assets while others are still tuning hyperparameters or reading papers. Join our team of world-class engineers at CHAOS Inc. who move fast in a high-trust environment where independence and impact aren't buzzwords. 

• We are seeking a highly motivated and mission-oriented Principal Software Engineer, Applied AI to drive the development, integration, and deployment of AI/ML-powered capabilities across CHAOS’ product lines.  
• This individual will work in a high velocity environment with a very high-caliber team of researchers and engineers to ensure advanced AI research translates into tangible, real-world testable shippable software especially in defense applications.  
• You must bring a strong record of past successes of delivering AI powered solutions including but not limited to creative use of AI and Machine Learning technologies in solving actual business problems.  
• Any exposure to digital signal processing in a highly regulated or mission-driven sector like aerospace, defense, or critical infrastructure is a big plus.  
• Must have excellent communication and be comfortable in presenting your ideas to various stakeholders including customers.  
• The candidate should be comfortable working with distributed teams, partners, customers and other stakeholders to learn the requirements, come up with a proposal for a solution, rapidly develop prototypes and finally perhaps implement and roll them out eventually to production with low oversight. People who never say, “not my problem”. 

Responsibilities:

• Learn: Quickly come up to speed browsing existing code and documentation. Be motivated to learn unfamiliar subjects and drive your own learning needs. Continuously keep up with industry trends. 
• Productization: Ensure our AI models are robust, interpretable, testable, and performant under real-world conditions—especially in adversarial, low-power, GPS-Denied and/or edge-deployed environments. You must have an incredible eye to detail and be able to make tradeoffs keeping business interests in mind. 
• On-site 2-3 days a week in San Francisco, CA 

Minimum Requirements:

• BS or MS or PhD in Comp Sc/ Electrical/ Electronic Engineering or equivalent professional experience 
• 8 - 15+ years of hands-on experience covering Data Science, data engineering, setting up model building and inferencing pipelines and using data science to solve real business and other problems.  
• Experience leading small teams of junior engineers or mentoring them is required