Founding AI Engineer

About Eklan We are building the communication-performance infrastructure for the multilingual global workforce Everyday, millions of highly skilled professionals are underestimated - not because they lack expertise, but because language can prevent them from demonstrating it clearly under pressure. Eklan gives professionals a realistic environment to practise the conversations their jobs demand, receive precise feedback, and improve before the real moment arrives. We are beginning with healthcare, where communication directly affects patient safety, professional trust and career progression. Our long-term vision extends across every communication-critical industry. We are looking for an exceptional Founding AI Engineer to help build the technical foundation required to deliver this vision at global scale. About the Role You will work directly with the founder to design, build and scale Eklan’s core AI platform. This is not a narrow model-integration role. You will influence our architecture, product, AI systems, engineering culture and technical strategy. You will move between understanding customers, prototyping new experiences, evaluating model performance and building reliable production infrastructure. You will have significant ownership from the beginning and the opportunity to shape both the product and the company. What you will build You will help us create: Real-time, voice-based AI simulations that respond naturally to learners Role-, industry- and situation-specific AI characters Adaptive simulations that change based on a learner’s decisions and communication Performance-evaluation systems that assess clarity, response latency, completeness, terminology and professional judgment Personalized practice experiences generated from each learner’s weaknesses Reliable speech-to-text, text-to-speech and conversational-AI pipelines Evaluation frameworks for measuring simulation quality, safety and learning outcomes Multi-tenant infrastructure for individuals, employers and training organizations Analytics that show individual and organizational performance over time Secure, observable and cost-efficient infrastructure capable of supporting global usage What you will do Own major technical decisions across AI, backend, infrastructure and product architecture Build and deploy production-grade generative-AI systems Design orchestration, memory, retrieval and evaluation systems for dynamic simulations Improve conversational realism, response quality and voice latency Create systems for testing, monitoring and mitigating hallucinations and inconsistent model behaviour Establish engineering standards for reliability, security, privacy, testing and observability Make thoughtful build-versus-buy decisions across models, voice providers and infrastructure Work directly with learners and industry experts to translate real workflows into effective simulations Recruit and mentor future members of Eklan’s engineering team Help define Eklan’s long-term technical roadmap and defensibility What we are looking for You may be a strong fit if you: Have built and operated production software systems used by real customers Have strong backend and systems-engineering fundamentals Have hands-on experience building products with large language models Understand model orchestration, structured outputs, retrieval, tool use and AI evaluation Can work with real-time audio, speech recognition or voice-generation systems - or are excited to master them quickly Are proficient in Python and comfortable working across a modern product stack Understand cloud infrastructure, databases, APIs, queues, caching and distributed systems Can balance rapid experimentation with long-term architectural quality Communicate clearly about technical decisions, constraints and trade-offs Are comfortable operating with ambiguity and taking responsibility beyond a conventional engineering job description Care deeply about customers and the real-world consequences of the systems you build Experience with healthcare, learning technology or multilingual products is valuable, but not required. Especially valuable experience We would be particularly interested if you have worked on one or more of the following: Real-time conversational or voice AI LLM evaluation and observability Agentic systems and workflow orchestration Low-latency distributed systems Personalized or adaptive learning systems Healthcare, enterprise or regulated software Speech, pronunciation or linguistic analysis Multi-tenant SaaS infrastructure Human-in-the-loop AI systems Scaling an early-stage product from prototype to significant usage What matters more than credentials We care less about prestigious titles and more about evidence of exceptional ability. Show us systems you have built, difficult technical problems you have solved, open-source contributions, research you have translated into products or projects that demonstrate unusual curiosity and ownership. You do not need to satisfy every requirement. We are looking for a builder who learns quickly, reasons from first principles and consistently turns ambitious ideas into reliable products. *Why join Eklan * Founding-level ownership You will help determine what we build, how we build it and the engineering culture we establish. A technically ambitious problem Eklan sits at the intersection of voice AI, adaptive simulation, performance evaluation, personalization and industry-specific intelligence. Direct customer impact You will see professionals use what you build to become safer, more confident and more effective at work. A meaningful global mission Expertise is globally distributed, but the ability to demonstrate it confidently across languages is not. We want to change that. Meaningful equity As an early technical leader, you will have genuine ownership in the value you help create. What success could look like Within your first 12 months, you will have: Helped establish Eklan’s scalable technical architecture Shipped major improvements to our real-time simulation experience Built evaluation systems that make AI performance measurable Improved platform reliability, latency and unit economics Developed reusable infrastructure for launching new professions and industries Helped recruit the first members of a world-class engineering organization How to apply Send us the following: Your résumé or personal website Introduce us to a topic that interests you and explain why (Max. 150 words) Links to relevant projects, code, research or writing Please do not send a generic cover letter. We would rather learn what you have built, how you think and why you want to build Eklan with us. Benefits: Flexible schedule Location: Toronto, ON