AI/ML Engineer, Lead

New York City on site Until 8/22/2026 6+ years exp First posted March 18, 2026 Last posted March 18, 2026
Job description

About Sandbar

Sandbar is an interface company in New York City. We aim to augment individuals so we can each think, act, and move more freely. Our team has built SW, ML, and HW products across Meta, CTRL-labs, Google, Apple, Fitbit, Peloton, and Equinox.

Our first product, Stream, is a self extension—a private voice ring and conversational interface. Stream has been featured in WSJ, Bloomberg, & Wired, and begins shipping in Summer '26.

Join us in creating technology that extends human thinking.

About

We’re looking for a Lead ML Engineer to build Stream, a new conversational interface. As an ML Lead, you will architect, build, and deploy a new interface which spans agentic control, multimodal interactions, and information retrieval. This role is perfect for someone who cares deeply about real-world ML deployment and human-in-the-loop agentic interactions.

Responsibilities

  • Lead architecture, strategy, and tradeoffs for our ML-based products

  • Design and improve user-facing model-based experiences, including agentic control, conversational interactions, and information retrieval.

  • Develop infrastructure to rapidly develop, evaluate, and deploy models

  • Optimize inference pipelines for latency, reliability, and concurrency

  • Work closely with other ML/AI engineers, infrastructure engineers, designers, and cofounders on existing and future products

Qualifications

  • 6+ years in machine learning experience

  • Experience shipping ML-based products is required

  • Experience in large-language model evaluation and post-training is required

  • Experience in audio / voice ML is a plus

  • Comfortable writing production-grade software

  • Passion for human-computer interaction

  • Experience setting technical direction and driving execution with multidisciplinary teams

FTE Benefits

  • Health, vision, and dental benefits

  • Company-sponsored 401(k)

  • Unlimited PTO and sick time

  • Early stage equity

Compensation (from employer):
$210K – $290K • Offers Equity

About this role

Summary

Lead ML development for conversational interface, optimize deployment, and set technical strategy.

Job title

AI/ML Engineer, Lead

Experience level

6+ years

Minimum experience

6+ years exp

Industry

software

Location requirements

New York City, remote work not specified

Salary

$210K – $290K

Management role

No

Skills & keywords

Required skills

machine learningML deploymentlarge-language models evaluationsoftware engineering

Preferred skills

audio voice ML

Specializations

machine learninglarge-language modelsaudio voice ML
Locations

Structured locations inferred from the posting.

New York, NY, USA

On-site City