Founding Software Engineer

Denver, CO; Boulder, CO; or Remote

Approximate Labs is an AI research and product lab focused at the intersection of artificial intelligence of tabular data. We are creating a future where access to data analysis is universal. In this future, AI will play the role of analyst, taking requests in natural language and giving clear, detailed responses.

We are seeking passionate individuals eager to build AI and making the world more data-driven. As a fast-paced, early stage startup, we are looking for team members who thrive in ambiguous environments; will enthusiastically learn, grow, and debate with others; and are hungry to tackle hard problems with a world-class team.

What we’re building

Multi-modal text and data foundation model

Foundation models like GPT-4 have demonstrated that AI can achieve human level-competency in tasks across multiple domains. We are building a multi-modal foundation model for text and data that will understand and manipulate data as well as human data analysts.

Repository of tabular data

Increasingly large training data sets are a key driver of the rapid increase in AI intelligence. We are building a repository of tabular data with sufficient volume and diversity to train a foundation model. This data set will be similar in scope to The Pile and LAION-5B.

Natural language interfaces to data systems

Our AI data analyst will engage with humans as a collaborator. It will need to clarify and select approaches amidst ambiguity, explain how it arrived at its answers, and adjust it’s approach with feedback. All of this will be done in natural language.

What we’re looking for

Skills & Experience

Strong candidates will have a strong technical foundation and spike in two or more of the following:

• Fundamentals of computer science, machine learning, information theory, and/or data systems
• Designing, building, and shipping real-world software from scratch
• Architecting, tuning, babysitting and benchmarking ML models
• Working with large scale distributed systems.
• Creating intuitive and visually appealing user interfaces

Tools we use

We value both experience and a desire to learn.

• Languages/Frameworks: Python, Ray, Pytorch, Next.js
• Technologies: Transformers, DataSketches
• Infrastructure: Cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP and Cloudflare), TPUs, GPUs

Our People & Culture

We are committed to doing the best work of our lives while living our best lives. We don’t believe that having a job you love and a meaningful career are at odds with a fulfilling personal life. We find that a fulfilling work life fuels a fulfilling personal life, and vice versa. This means we embody the best of high-performance and living fully.

Our approach to people is simple: Hire the best people, help them set big goals, and get out of their way. We are looking for world-class doers, thinkers, and teammates. Doers produce extraordinary results in a short amount of time. Thinkers are voracious learners with good judgement. Teammates prioritize team success over individual success and bring out the best in others.

We are a team of four, looking to add one or two talented folks to our team.

Our benefits

We provide generous compensation and benefits meant to help our teams stay balanced and life fully.

• Generous compensation. We offer seed stage equity and growth stage salaries.
• Great health insurance (fully covered health, dental, and vision)
• Extreme flexibility. Work when you want, where you want, and how you want.
• Unlimited vacation, because there is more to life than working.

The pay range for this role is $150K-$300K.