Machine Learning Engineer

About Vardera Labs

At Vardera, we’re building the next generation of infrastructure for the art, auction, and collectibles industry—combining cutting‑edge AI, computer vision, and automation to power catalog creation, data strategy, and operational excellence for auction houses worldwide. We are a small, venture‑backed team of operators and entrepreneurs with a bold mission: to modernize a multi‑billion‑dollar market at a critical moment of generational ownership transfer and digital transformation.

What You’ll Do

• Build and deploy AI/ML models across new asset categories (comics, cards, watches, jewelry, fine art, etc.).

• Balance from‑scratch builds with leveraging foundation models and off‑the‑shelf tools—using the right approach for speed, accuracy, and efficiency.

• Prototype quickly, test with real customer data, and push to production.

• Design workflows that minimize wasted effort while compounding into long‑term defensible data + model infrastructure.

What We’re Looking For

• Strong background in applied ML (vision, text, multimodal, embeddings, fine‑tuning).

• Pragmatic decision‑maker: knows when to train, when to adapt, and when to just glue things together.

• Builder mindset—bias toward action, rapid iteration, and comfort with messy or sparse data.

• Excited to join a post‑seed startup as a founding team member with broad project ownership.

Why Join

• Direct founding‑level impact in a venture‑backed company already working with major customers.

• Build the models that expand us to multi‑category AI infrastructure.

• See your models drive real‑world revenue and efficiency in a multi‑trillion‑dollar industry.

Compensation

• Salary level matching seed‑stage hires (relative to experience and fit): $175,000 – $250,000

• Equity:
Meaningful early equity in a high‑growth startup

Location

Hybrid, with periodic in‑person offsites and industry conferences. While we have a bias toward in‑person in Boston, it’s not required everyday, but we expect you spend >50% of your time in the office.

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