Engineer in Residence: Research Coach

AI is making it trivially easy for students to skip the hard parts of research. This role is to build an AI research coach for high school students that teaches the research process through guided coaching not ghostwriting so students come out stronger thinkers, not just better at hiding AI use. This is a 12-week, on-site residency in Mountain View, CA ($10K/month). You will work directly with Andrew Ng to take this idea from concept to working product. If the idea validates, you become a co-founder. AI Fund writes a $1M check at a $4M valuation. We are only considering candidates within commuting distance from Mountain View. As part of the interview process, you will be asked to complete a Builder Challenge. country: US all locations: [Mountain View, CA] commitment: Contract department: AI Fund location: Mountain View, CA team: AI Fund What you'll build: A guided workflow for question refinement, source review, note-taking, drafting support, and rubric-aware feedback. Citation verification grounded in real scholarly sources rather than generic model claims. A transparent authorship log that distinguishes student-written work from AI scaffolding or suggestions. Optional sandboxed experimentation or code execution where computational work is part of the research process. What you'll do: Own the user journey from early research question to draft refinement and evidence review. Design guardrails that enforce coaching behavior instead of drifting into ghostwriting. Build multi-step agentic workflows with strong traceability, citation grounding, and failure handling. Talk to students, parents, or educators to learn where the process helps versus harms. Work with AI Fund's build team on product positioning, pedagogy, and technical tradeoffs. What you need: Strong full-stack engineering ability and real hands-on experience shipping multi-step GenAI systems. Experience with citation grounding, retrieval, agent orchestration, evals, or developer-tool style workflows. Product judgment around trust, educational integrity, and how much help a student should receive. A bias toward clear UX for complex workflows rather than impressive but brittle demos. You know how to use AI coding assistants and modern AI tools to increase speed without surrendering product judgment. US work authorization. We are unable to sponsor visas for this role. Helpful but not required: Edtech experience or a personal connection to research education. Experience building code sandboxes, notebook-style tools, or pedagogy-heavy products. Experience with LangGraph, Claude Agent SDK, or similar workflow tooling. Who this is for: A builder who cares about teaching and believes AI should make students stronger thinkers, not better cheaters. Someone who wants a product problem that combines deep workflow design, safety, and clear commercial demand. What to know upfront: This is a 12-week, full-time, on-site residency in Mountain View, California. Not every residency becomes a company. The goal is to pressure-test the idea quickly and honestly with real users and customers. You will be building an AI Fund idea, not bringing your own startup idea into the program. The process typically includes a Builder Event or equivalent working conversation, then a 48-hour Builder Challenge, then panel review with AI Fund build leadership. The compensation is intentionally modest during the residency because the upside, if the idea works, is a founder-level role.