Principal ML Research Engineer at Lanesurf (S25)
$120K - $225K • 0.50% - 1.00%
Voice AI for booking freight
San Francisco, CA, US
Full-time
Will sponsor
3+ years
About Lanesurf
We are building AI agents that enable autonomous logistics (think moving a truck from Chicago to Texas, fully coordinated by AI, that automates how goods are priced, negotiated, and booked)
Watch one of our demos here - AI that spoke to 96 carriers and booked a load in 10 minutes: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7394069447327555584
Proven Traction: Our AI platform is in production, executing thousands of live negotiations and load bookings daily for logistics companies that collectively manage over $10 billion in annual freight.
We’re backed by General Catalyst, Jawed Karim (Co-Founder, YouTube), Y Combinator and are scaling fast across the U.S. logistics network.
About the role
Build AI that talks, negotiates rates, and enables autonomous movement of trucks from pickup to delivery
Demo of AI booking a shipment in 10 minutes by speaking to 96 trucking companies simultaneously
The problem
If Walmart needs to move a truck of avocados from California to Chicago, today they must:
Speak with 50+ trucking companies
Check weight and temperature requirements
Negotiate price and availability
Do it one call at a time
This process takes hours and thousands of phone calls every day across the industry.
What we’re building
We’re building AI agents that do this work automatically.
Calls and emails dozens of trucking companies at once
Checks requirements (weight, temperature, lanes)
Negotiates prices in parallel
Books a truck in minutes, not hours
Proof it works
👉 In this demo, our AI spoke to 96 trucking companies simultaneously and booked a shipment in under 10 minutes - https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7394069447327555584
Why this is exciting
You’ll work on AI that handles real-world transactions through phone calls
Real-world, high-stakes work enabling autonomous logistics - think moving a truck from Chicago to Texas, fully coordinated by AI
Small team, high ownership, fast iteration
Hard problems that don’t exist in benchmarks
What we’ll work on
Train & Tune Models
Fine-tune transcribers and speech models for real-time voice agents operating on live phone calls.
Enable real time transcriber fine-tuning based on caller context
Improve transcription accuracy for domain-specific language under noisy conditions
Fine-tune interruption models on domain-specific conversations
Post-Train speech models for intonations, pacing and naturalness and avoiding robotic cadence
LLM optimization
Structuring modules, and policies that compose cleanly
Optimizing LLM outputs for brevity, correctness, and timing
Reducing drift across long, multi-turn conversations
Evaluating changes against real call outcomes, not just text metrics
Evaluation & iteration
You’ll help define how we measure quality across:
Transcription accuracy where it actually matters
Voice naturalness as judged by listeners
Conversation efficiency and completion
You can be a great fit, if:
ML Engineer with Real-World Experience – You’ve trained and shipped models in production. Bonus if you’ve worked with LLMs or audio models.
Fluent in Modern ML Stack – You know your way around Python, PyTorch, and today’s ML tools - from training pipelines to evaluation benchmarks.
Execution-Oriented – You move fast, take ownership, and focus on solving real problems over perfect ones.
Startup-Ready – You’re adaptable, resilient, and energized by ambiguity and fast-changing priorities.
Clear Communicator & Team Player – You collaborate well across functions and push decisions forward.
Details
Cash + Equity
Location: San Francisco, CA, US
Interview Process
30 mins with Co-Founder (online)
Assignment (take-home)
15 mins with Co-Founder (online)
Work trial (in-person in SF)
Offer
Location
San Francisco
CA
US
Salary
$120K - $225K
Experience
3+ Years
Principal ML Research Engineer at Lanesurf | GetHired