Staff Research Engineer

Design and implement a state-of-the-art, neurosymbolic, self-learning agent for e-commerce search. Requires deep understanding of AI and neurosymbolic approaches.

About the role

At Onton, we’re pushing the boundaries of the possible. It takes the average shopper 79 days to make a >$50 purchase decision, and we’re taking that to less than 1. Vector search, RAG, and other current-gen technologies yield sub-par results. You have the chance to develop a new paradigm to build a decision-making experience that people love.

You have the opportunity to:

Design, implement, and continually extend a state-of-the-art, neurosymbolic, self-learning agent that delivers highly accurate, trustworthy, hallucination-free search results. Contra OpenAI, we believe that scale is not all you need. LLMs are an important part of the puzzle, but not the whole picture. The agent you create will ultimately be capable of superseding most things we do at Onton.
Create a culture of high standards and continuous improvement. Nothing is someone else’s problem.
Stay up to date on the latest AI (especially neurosymbolic) research to leverage cutting-edge techniques to continually enhance our agent.

We expect you to:

Command a deep, principled understanding of the current state of the field of AI, especially neurosymbolic approaches.
Enjoy implementation, not just writing papers.
Quickly and iteratively ship code that is correct, robust, scalable, and maintainable. We’re not optimizing for novelty, academic recognition, or theoretical purity. Recognition will come easily from the excellence of the product we build.
Balance craft and velocity. Incur technical debt intentionally and pay it off as soon as possible.
Default to assembling from parts before building from scratch.
Be excited about non-purely-statistical approaches to AI.

We’d love it if you:

Have a PhD or Master’s in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Cognitive Science, Linguistics, or comparable (or equivalent research experience). We will consider other candidates on a case-by-case basis.

Location

We are remote (today) but not distant. We operate on Pacific Time. We’re building hubs in San Francisco, CA, and Salt Lake City, UT, so we can connect in person. Our team works 3-days a week in one of the hubs. We’re offering relocation compensation as we build density in these areas.

About Onton

We’re pioneering the next generation of e-commerce search. Since launching our product publicly last year, we’ve grown exponentially to hundreds of thousands of users.

More recently, we’ve built the foundation of a neurosymbolic AI in-house that dramatically increases search accuracy. In 2025, we plan to use this technology to expand into new categories and grow to 10M+ MAU.

To support expansion, we’ve raised $10M+ in funding. Our most recent Seed round was led by a top-tier firm and a supporting cast of well-known VCs and individuals with backgrounds from Amazon, Google, Stitch Fix, Whatnot, Stripe, Honey, Shopify, and more!

About the role

You have the opportunity to:

Design, implement, and continually extend a state-of-the-art, neurosymbolic, self-learning agent that delivers highly accurate, trustworthy, hallucination-free search results. Contra OpenAI, we believe that scale is not all you need. LLMs are an important part of the puzzle, but not the whole picture. The agent you create will ultimately be capable of superseding most things we do at Onton.

Create a culture of high standards and continuous improvement. Nothing is someone else’s problem.

Stay up to date on the latest AI (especially neurosymbolic) research to leverage cutting-edge techniques to continually enhance our agent.

We expect you to:

Command a deep, principled understanding of the current state of the field of AI, especially neurosymbolic approaches.

Enjoy implementation, not just writing papers.

Quickly and iteratively ship code that is correct, robust, scalable, and maintainable. We’re not optimizing for novelty, academic recognition, or theoretical purity. Recognition will come easily from the excellence of the product we build.

Balance craft and velocity. Incur technical debt intentionally and pay it off as soon as possible.

Default to assembling from parts before building from scratch.

Be excited about non-purely-statistical approaches to AI.

We’d love it if you:

Have a PhD or Master’s in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Cognitive Science, Linguistics, or comparable (or equivalent research experience). We will consider other candidates on a case-by-case basis.

About Onton

We’re pioneering the next generation of e-commerce search. Since launching our product publicly last year, we’ve grown exponentially to hundreds of thousands of users.