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Principal ML Research Engineer

Compensation
$120,000–$225,000/year

Job Description

Build AI that talks, negotiates rates, and enables autonomous movement of trucks from pickup to delivery

Demo of AI booking a shipment in 10 minutes by speaking to 96 trucking companies simultaneously

The problem

If Walmart needs to move a truck of avocados from California to Chicago, today they must:

  • Speak with 50+ trucking companies
  • Check weight and temperature requirements
  • Negotiate price and availability
  • Do it one call at a time

This process takes hours and thousands of phone calls every day across the industry.

What we’re building

We’re building AI agents that do this work automatically.

  • Calls and emails dozens of trucking companies at once
  • Checks requirements (weight, temperature, lanes)
  • Negotiates prices in parallel
  • Books a truck in minutes, not hours

Proof it works

👉 In this demo, our AI spoke to 96 trucking companies simultaneously and booked a shipment in under 10 minutes - https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7394069447327555584

Why this is exciting

  • You’ll work on AI that handles real-world transactions through phone calls
  • Real-world, high-stakes work enabling autonomous logistics - think moving a truck from Chicago to Texas, fully coordinated by AI
  • Small team, high ownership, fast iteration
  • Hard problems that don’t exist in benchmarks

What we’ll work on

Train & Tune Models

Fine-tune transcribers and speech models for real-time voice agents operating on live phone calls.

  • Enable real time transcriber fine-tuning based on caller context
  • Improve transcription accuracy for domain-specific language under noisy conditions
  • Fine-tune interruption models on domain-specific conversations
  • Post-Train speech models for intonations, pacing and naturalness and avoiding robotic cadence

LLM optimization

  • Structuring modules, and policies that compose cleanly
  • Optimizing LLM outputs for brevity, correctness, and timing
  • Reducing drift across long, multi-turn conversations
  • Evaluating changes against real call outcomes, not just text metrics

Evaluation & iteration

You’ll help define how we measure quality across:

  • Transcription accuracy where it actually matters
  • Voice naturalness as judged by listeners
  • Conversation efficiency and completion

You can be a great fit, if:

  • ML Engineer with Real-World Experience – You’ve trained and shipped models in production. Bonus if you’ve worked with LLMs or audio models.
  • Fluent in Modern ML Stack – You know your way around Python, PyTorch, and today’s ML tools - from training pipelines to evaluation benchmarks.
  • Execution-Oriented – You move fast, take ownership, and focus on solving real problems over perfect ones.
  • Startup-Ready – You’re adaptable, resilient, and energized by ambiguity and fast-changing priorities.
  • Clear Communicator & Team Player – You collaborate well across functions and push decisions forward.

Details

  • Cash + Equity
  • Location: San Francisco, CA, US

Interview Process

  1. 30 mins with Co-Founder (online)
  2. Assignment (take-home)
  3. 15 mins with Co-Founder (online)
  4. Work trial (in-person in SF)
  5. Offer

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Job Details

Location
San Francisco, CA, US
Posted
Mar 24, 2026, 04:29 PM
Listed
Mar 24, 2026, 04:29 PM
Compensation
$120,000 - $225,000 per year

About Lanesurf

Part of the growing space & AI ecosystem pushing the frontiers of technology.

Found this role interesting?

Principal ML Research Engineer
Lanesurf
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Shipping like we're funded. We're not. No affiliation.

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