# Wildcard (YC W25) Is Hiring a Founding Applied ML Engineer > Source: > Published: 2026-06-21 17:00:28+00:00 AEO/GEO for E-Commerce and Retail Wildcard is the agentic commerce optimization platform for ecommerce and retail brands. We 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. As 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. We’re growing **50% month over month**. You’ll work directly with me, Kaushik Mahorker, founder of Wildcard. Previously 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. That experience made something clear: shopping discovery is being rebuilt for an AI-first world, and most brands are not prepared for the shift. We’re looking for a Founding Applied ML Engineer to help shape both the product and the company from the earliest stage. This is engineer number one. You are not joining an engineering team. You are helping build one. The 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. This is not a pure research role. It is not a pure analytics role. It is not a narrow full-stack role either. We need a builder who can move between product, infrastructure, applied ML, data, and customer problems without waiting for someone else to define the lane. You’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. We 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. This market is moving fast. AI shopping agents, agentic commerce protocols, and consumer behavior are all changing in real time. The ambiguity is the opportunity. You may work on: You’ll work on problems that sit between modeling, product, and data infrastructure. The work is fast-paced, practical, and tied directly to company priorities. You will not spend months optimizing one narrow model in isolation. This 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. You’ll be able to point to the models, systems, and product decisions you made as part of the reason why we win. 1. Pending Approval 2. Quick Call with Founder 3. Engineering Challenge 4. One to two-day work trial 5. Offer Extended 6. Hired