Founding Forward-Deployed ML Engineer

About our portfolio company - Tessel

Tessel builds the evidence engine powering the medical AI models that regulators clear hospitals trust and patients depend on.

In medical diagnostics models that interpret medical images inform real clinical decisions. The barrier to deployment is rarely performanceits proof. Demonstrating how a model behaves and where it breaks is slow manual and often inconclusive. FDA submissions stall. Hospital pilots fail. Strong results on paper arent enough.

We believe safety-critical AI needs more than snapshot metrics. Every AI system should come with a living evidence record that evolves over time allowing stakeholders access to information about real model behavior. This should shape how we build regulate and adopt AI so the best technology reaches patients faster not despite the scrutiny but because of it.

The role

You work directly with medical imaging companies preparing AI-powered devices for FDA 510(k) or De Novo submissions. You own customer engagements end-to-end: running meetings defining evaluation questions leading investigations and delivering evidence that materially affects go/no-go decisions.

The focus isnt building models but understanding and demonstrating behavior. Where does the model generalize Where does it break What trade-offs are being made What uncertainty remains The output is a defensible behavioral understanding supported by rigorous evidenceclear enough to inform internal decisions build customer confidence and withstand regulatory review.

You combine practical ML skills with the customer-obsession and product thinking. You solve problems for real customers and take those learnings to build a platform that scales.

Trajectory: This role grows with the company. Near-term: define how evidence delivery scales. Long-term: Head of Product or Head of Engineering depending on where you have the most impact.

Qualifications :

• Strong judgment around ML evaluation: able to design investigations interpret ambiguous results and reason about failure modes in real systems
• Experience with messy real-world medical data and incomplete or imperfect ground truth
• End-to-end analytical ownership in Python from data ingestion through defensible analysis and communication of results
• Comfortable representing technical findings directly to customers and non-technical stakeholders
• Operates effectively with incomplete information and evolving problem definitions

Bonus:

Familiarity with FDA pathways medical imaging or regulated ML environments.

This role is not for you if:

• You just want to build novel ML models for performance improvements on a benchmark
• You need clearly defined tasks and stable scope to be effective
• Youre uncomfortable presenting findings that still contain uncertainty
• You want pure technical work without customer relationship ownership

Why Tessel

Define the future of safe AI.

The work you do determines whether a model reaches patients or stalls in regulatory review. Whether a hospital adopts or walks away. Whether a company can stand behind what theyre shipping.

We hold ourselves to high standards: intellectual honesty about whats known and unknown rigor in methodology and judgment that prioritizes patient safety. If youre motivated by ownership accountability and real-world impactnot incremental optimization or hypeTessel is for you.

Additional Information :

Foothill Ventures is an equal opportunity employer. All aspects of employment including the decision to hire promote discipline or discharge will be based on merit competence performance and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race color religion marital status age national origin ancestry physical or mental disability medical condition pregnancy genetic information gender sexual orientation gender identity or expression veteran status or any other status protected under federal state or local law. 

Remote Work :

No

Employment Type :

Full-time