Founding AI Solutions Engineer - USA

About Inworld

Inworld is a research lab and inference provider focused on realtime AI for consumer-facing applications. We build first-party speech models, serve LLMs, and run the inference behind modular APIs designed for high-volume, realtime workloads.

Hundreds of millions of users interact with Inworld powered apps every day and we serve over 10 trillion LLM tokens per month. Our models and infrastructure support consumer applications across companions, healthcare, fitness, education, media, and more. Our work spans model research, realtime inference, large-scale serving infrastructure, and the APIs developers use to bring these capabilities into production.

We’ve raised more than $125M from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Section 32, Kleiner Perkins, Microsoft’s M12 venture fund, Founders Fund, Meta, Stanford, and others. Our technology has powered experiences from companies including NVIDIA, Microsoft Xbox, Niantic, Logitech Streamlabs, Wishroll, Little Umbrella, and Bible Chat. Inworld has also been recognized by CB Insights as one of the 100 most promising AI companies globally and named one of LinkedIn’s Top 10 Startups in the USA.

Your Impact

We're looking for a Founding AI Solutions Engineer who will sit at the intersection of sales, product, and engineering — and become the technical backbone of our revenue team. You'll work directly with the senior leadership and our GTM team to help enterprise and developer customers go from "this sounds interesting" to "this is in production."

You'll run POCs, build prototypes, and translate complex technical questions into clear answers for both engineers and executives. You'll own the technical side of deals pre- and post-signature — ensuring customers are genuinely successful, not just signed. Your work will directly shape how Inworld scales across gaming, CCaaS, media, consumer AI and beyond, and your fingerprints will be on the SE function as we build it.

What You'll Do

Partner with GTM Leads on deals — lead technical discovery, run POCs, and own the solution design from first call through close

Build working prototypes and reference integrations that demonstrate Inworld's TTS, STT, LLM Router, LLM inference, and Realtime API solutions in the customer's actual context — not just a demo environment

Serve as the primary technical advisor during onboarding, getting customers from signed contract to production-quality integration

Translate customer requirements into actionable feedback for Product and Engineering

Answer deep technical questions live — latency tradeoffs, on-prem vs. cloud deployment, streaming architecture, model selection — without needing backup

Build and maintain a library of integration examples, demo environments, and technical collateral that the whole GTM team can use

Identify expansion opportunities by understanding what customers are building and where Inworld can do more

Contribute to shaping our technical sales process as an early hire — you'll define what great looks like here

Work closely with GTM leadership to redefine modern GTM and sales process

What You'll Bring

5+ years of experience in a customer-facing technical role (Solutions Engineer, Sales Engineer, Solutions Architect, or Technical Account Manager)

Strong hands-on coding ability — you can write production-quality integration code, not just scripts. Python strongly preferred; JavaScript/TypeScript a plus

Deep familiarity with AI/ML APIs — you understand how to work with LLMs, speech models, and streaming APIs, and can explain tradeoffs to both engineers and executives

Demonstrated ability to run technical POCs end-to-end and drive them to a decision

Effective communicator who can bridge technical and business conversations with ease

High level of empathy and integrity in customer interactions

Thrives in ambiguity and sees constant change as opportunity, not obstacle

Bachelor's degree or higher in a technical domain

Bonus Qualifications

Experience with voice AI, TTS, STT, or real-time audio and speech systems

Background in gaming, CCaaS, or media and entertainment — our top customer verticals

Familiarity with on-premise and edge deployment patterns (containerization, model serving, quantization)

Experience with WebSocket/WebRTC or real-time streaming infrastructure

Prior experience at a high-growth startup or as a founder/operator

Experience with modern GTM tooling (Clay, n8n, Zapier, etc.)

Candidates must be based in the SF Bay Area or willing to relocate (you will be working on-site in our South Bay office a few days a week).

The base salary range for this full-time position is $170,000 - $250,000+ bonus + equity + benefits.

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