Founding Data Platform Engineer

About Woven

Consumer Travel is Ripe for Disruption

Today's travelers are seeking personalized, immersive, and authentic experiences that reflect their unique tastes and interests. They want to be inspired, to feel the thrill of discovery, and to seamlessly benefit from technology throughout their journeys. Yet, the current travel landscape is a maze of disjointed self-serve transactions, often leaving travelers feeling frustrated and unfulfilled. The explosion of travel booking sites is sucking the fun out of getting away, with travelers needing to visit dozens of websites to plan a trip and often needing to resort to time consuming offline strategies. As a result, the joy of travel is often overshadowed by the stress of planning, with travelers spending significantly more time researching a vacation today than just a few years ago. 

Our AI-Native Travel App

Introducing Woven, a stealth startup backed by four top venture funds that is reimagining the way we travel. Woven is building an AI-powered Travel App (currently in private beta) that simplifies the process of discovering, planning, and booking trips, all in one app. It intuitively understands your preferences, assists in uncovering stays, activities, and dining options, and supports travelers throughout their journey, from exploring potential destinations to accommodating last-minute changes during a trip. It’s like having a personal travel agent, but better, as it’s affordable, available 24/7, responds within seconds, and is armed with local insights, captivating photos, maps, itineraries, pricing, and availability. By harnessing the latest advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) and pioneering breakthroughs in Agent Architectures, Woven is poised to revolutionize the travel industry.

Market Opportunity

Contributing over 10% to the global GDP, the travel and tourism sector is on the brink of a significant transformation resulting from fundamental shifts in consumer preferences. Newer generations are prioritizing experiences, particularly travel, over material possessions, and the influence of social media is further fueling this trend by inspiring travelers to seek out unique and personalized experiences. As a result, the online travel market, already a $2.3 trillion industry, is projected to grow by more than 10% per year through 2030. With its focus on crafting exquisite, personalized trips, Woven is well positioned to capitalize on these trends and transform the way we travel. 

Why Woven?

Woven' ability to execute this vision is underpinned by an experienced founding team and investors with highly-relevant expertise. Our CEO is Jonathan Downey, a three-time AI-startup founder, MIT engineer, and 3rd generation pilot with a lifelong passion for travel. Additional founding team members bring decades of expertise in consumer apps and data-driven personalization and include the Head of ML from Candidate Labs. The company is backed by former executives from Pinterest, Twitter, and Stitchfix alongside top venture funds including SignalFire, SNR, Moxxie Ventures, and Fuel Capital.

The Role: Founding Data Platform Engineer 

As our Founding Data Platform engineer you will build the foundations that support delivering AI and ML solutions to our consumer application. You will be responsible for shaping our data infrastructure which will drive our conversational AI agents, large language models, recommender systems, and ML algorithms. 

Your ability to work autonomously as part of a team will be essential: we'll look to you to guide decisions, identify opportunities, and ultimately establish the appropriate abstractions and frameworks to enable our technical teams and platform to scale. You'll be deeply involved in our operations, ensuring the reliability of our infrastructure and developing any needed in-house computing solutions. 

Responsibilities

You will oversee all aspects of our Data Platform, and will report to ourVP of Engineering, Ryan Stevens. In this role you will: 

• Enable the rapid development and iteration of AI Agent architectures and LLMs by our machine learning team 

• Design, build, and maintain platforms and processes which enable high velocity of ML product development, productionalization, and data-driven decisions at scale

• Leverage cloud platforms and 3rd party solutions as appropriate to establish and manage our data warehouse, workflows and orchestrations

• Build strong relationships with our machine learning and engineering teams, fostering a culture of collaboration and technical excellence

• Ensure our solutions stay ahead of the curve by staying up-to-date with the latest technologies

This role merges technical expertise, strategic vision, and a dedication to team collaboration. Join us, and channel your passion for technology into transformative solutions for the world.

Desired Qualifications 

• Strong expertise in software engineering with exceptional coding and design skills, proficiency in Python required

• Experience in developing infrastructure, frameworks, and tools to accelerate algorithm development, model deployment, and AI/ML applications integration

• In-depth knowledge of cloud computing platforms, especially GCP or AWS, and familiarity with big data technologies like Kafka, Spark, Hive/Iceberg, Postgres, and Redis.

• Proven history of collaborating with data scientists and machine learning engineers, translating complex needs into actionable platform and engineering requirements

• Experience designing and implementing microservice architectures, particularly low-latency REST APIs

• Comfortable in fast-paced environments, adaptable to changes, and ability to lead projects autonomously from conception to completion

• Exceptional communication skills, capable of conveying intricate technical concepts to diverse audiences

• A background in building and managing data platforms in growth-oriented companies, whether in startups or tech-leading roles in larger organizations

Bonus Experience 

• Strong familiarity with machine learning and AI concepts

• Built scalable and robust infrastructure for generative AI systems

• Building and maturing Data Platform teams and infrastructure in a startup environment

Total Compensation & Pay Transparency

The compensation package for this role is meant to align with top Series-A companies and includes:

• Cash Compensation: The expected cash compensation for US employees in this position is $200K - $250K.

• Equity: As a founding engineer on the team, you will be granted significant ownership in the company

• Benefits: Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance for you and your dependents

Our Team

On our team we have:

• Three-time entrepreneur and founder/CEO with a history of raising over $100M in funding;

• Four-time COO and three-time founding employee with a history of raising over $500M in funding;

• Hands-on engineering leader, and former CTO, with expertise in full stack development, who has built high performing teams over 15 years, and worked for start-ups to Fortune 500 companies;

• Product leader with a decade of AI/ML product leadership experience for products spanning NLP, LLMs, signal processing, and computer vision;

• Machine learning expert with 12 years experience working across a range of domains from finance, ad tech and search, with research driving over 500 academic citations.

Together we’ve worked across dozens of different industries, and share a diverse range of backgrounds and interests, that span: computing, theater, skiing, physics, gardening, chess, mathematics, kiteboarding, and travel Yes - we are all passionate about Travel. We’ve deeply felt the struggles with the modern discovery and trip experience, and started this company with a mission to solve it together

Compensation Range: $200K - $250K