{"slug": "wildcard-yc-w25-is-hiring-a-founding-applied-ml-engineer", "title": "Wildcard (YC W25) Is Hiring a Founding Applied ML Engineer", "summary": "Wildcard (YC W25), an agentic commerce optimization platform for e-commerce and retail brands, is hiring a Founding Applied ML Engineer. The role involves building AI systems for visibility, recommendations, and automation as shopping shifts to AI agents. Founder Kaushik Mahorker, formerly at Scale AI, seeks engineer number one to shape product and company from the earliest stage.", "body_md": "AEO/GEO for E-Commerce and Retail\n\nWildcard is the agentic commerce optimization platform for ecommerce and retail brands.\n\nWe help brands understand, improve, and monetize how their products show up across AI shopping agents. We’re building the **mission control for agentic commerce**: visibility (AEO & GEO), recommendations, execution, attribution, and automation in one platform.\n\nAs shopping shifts from traditional search to AI agents, brands need to know where they appear, why competitors are winning, what to change, and whether those changes drive real business outcomes.\n\nWe’re growing **50% month over month**.\n\nYou’ll work directly with me, Kaushik Mahorker, founder of Wildcard.\n\nPreviously at Scale AI, I built the ecommerce enrichment engine behind the company’s largest pilot across 400K SKUs, 2.8M attributes, and hundreds of taxonomies, helping secure $15M+ in contracts with major retailers and marketplaces.\n\nThat experience made something clear: shopping discovery is being rebuilt for an AI-first world, and most brands are not prepared for the shift.\n\nWe’re looking for a Founding Applied ML Engineer to help shape both the product and the company from the earliest stage.\n\nThis is engineer number one. You are not joining an engineering team. You are helping build one.\n\nThe ideal person is strong enough to own product engineering across the stack, but also has the applied ML judgment to build reliable AI systems, ranking systems, evals, attribution models, agents, and automation loops that customers can actually trust.\n\nThis is not a pure research role. It is not a pure analytics role. It is not a narrow full-stack role either.\n\nWe need a builder who can move between product, infrastructure, applied ML, data, and customer problems without waiting for someone else to define the lane.\n\nYou’ll work directly with customers, own product and infrastructure, and help decide what gets built, how it gets built, and what we prioritize as the market evolves.\n\nWe are looking for someone high-agency, fast-moving, and expert-level with AI coding tools. You should use AI to move significantly faster, but not outsource your judgment to it.\n\nThis market is moving fast. AI shopping agents, agentic commerce protocols, and consumer behavior are all changing in real time. The ambiguity is the opportunity.\n\nYou may work on:\n\nYou’ll work on problems that sit between modeling, product, and data infrastructure.\n\nThe work is fast-paced, practical, and tied directly to company priorities. You will not spend months optimizing one narrow model in isolation.\n\nThis is a rare applied ML role where the work goes from messy data to production product to customer impact quickly. You’ll help decide what gets built, ship it end to end, and see whether it actually changes business outcomes.\n\nYou’ll be able to point to the models, systems, and product decisions you made as part of the reason why we win.\n\n1. Pending Approval\n\n2. Quick Call with Founder\n\n3. Engineering Challenge\n\n4. One to two-day work trial\n\n5. Offer Extended\n\n6. Hired", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/wildcard-yc-w25-is-hiring-a-founding-applied-ml-engineer", "canonical_source": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/wildcard/jobs/SEmo4di-founding-applied-ml-engineer", "published_at": "2026-06-21 17:00:28+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-21 17:03:36.938010+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "machine-learning", "ai-startups", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Wildcard", "YC W25", "Kaushik Mahorker", "Scale AI"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/wildcard-yc-w25-is-hiring-a-founding-applied-ml-engineer", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/wildcard-yc-w25-is-hiring-a-founding-applied-ml-engineer.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/wildcard-yc-w25-is-hiring-a-founding-applied-ml-engineer.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/wildcard-yc-w25-is-hiring-a-founding-applied-ml-engineer.jsonld"}}