ppbWhat we do /b /p pFlycatcher builds unsupervised visual anomaly detection for industrial inspection. Our system learns what normal looks like from a handful images, then flags everything else in milliseconds, on commodity hardware. No pre-labelled defect data. /p pThe technology comes out of 6+ years of research at IDSIA, a Swiss AI research institute affiliated with USI and SUPSI. We are supported by NVIDIA Inception and funded by Venture Kick, one of Switzerland's main early-stage startup funders, and we are a finalist at MassChallenge, which TIME and Statista ranked the number two accelerator in the United States in August 2026. /p pThat technology works, and the pipeline is now growing faster than our current team can serve it. What we need is more engineering depth, so we can push harder on delivery instead of choosing which customers to say yes to. That is the turn you would be joining at. /p pbWho you work with /b /p ullibDario Mantegazza (CEO, co-founder) /b: owns the research direction and the anomaly detection core. PhD, 6+ years at IDSIA. /li libArianna Marsilio (CPO, co-founder) /b: owns product. Second-time founder, 10+ years in UK startups from early stage to hyper-growth. /li libExternal technical support /b: an ex-Amazon scientist and an EPFL-trained AI engineer, who you will work alongside. /li /ul h3Tasks /h3 pbWhat you own /b /p pYou are the first senior technical hire, and you are taking over a codebase rather than joining one. /p pEngineering architecture and delivery. Production systems, from the edge node to the customer dashboard. The training and inference API. Cloud infrastructure and its cost curve. Automation of deployment. Technical hiring. The call on what we build and what we buy. /p pbWhat you will have achieved /b /p pCustomers are running our system in paid pilots today. Turning those into production deployments that run every day without us is the work ahead, and leading it is the core of this job. Expect your hands dirty, in the code and in front of customers, for the first few months. /p pbFirst 90 days /b /p ulliYou have taken the codebase over without a single client delivery slipping. /li liYou have been on site with customers, delivered our solution to them yourself, and can describe the value we provide in their words rather than ours. /li liYou have told us where the system will break first, how big that problem is, and what the fix could look like. /li /ul pbBy month 6 /b /p ulliYou have shipped the API alpha to a partner integrator. /li liYou have turned a POC into a production deployment that runs unattended and that a customer now relies on. Nobody here has done that before you. /li liYou have made deployment repeatable and written it down, so the second one costs a fraction of the first, and you have measured configuration hours per facility so we know what we are improving against. /li liYou have a hiring plan ready to run the moment we grow: roles scoped, bar set, candidates already warm. /li /ul pbBy month 12 /b /p ulliYou and your team are running five POCs and the first live facilities without a founder in the delivery loop, and you have opened our first manufacturing deployments. /li liYou oversaw the launch of the Automation Engine alpha working internally, measured against the baseline you set in the first six months. /li liYour first three to five engineers hired and productive, with a real on-call and incident process. /li /ul pbBy month 24 /b /p ulliYou took the Automation Engine and the plug-and-play product in beta. /li liYou have put API V1 in public hands: authentication, key management, rate limiting, and a support process you built on purpose. /li liYou have around fifteen facilities running, and manufacturing deployments that no longer need a bespoke rebuild. /li liYou have driven infrastructure cost per facility low enough that our licence pricing holds its margin at scale. /li liYou have built an engineering team that hires, ships and recovers from incidents without a founder in the room. /li /ul pbThe stack: loose on tools, tight on outcomes /b /p pToday we are Python-native; our proprietary models are written using PyTorch, the services are FastAPI, currently we use Azure for cloud: blob storage for models, SQL for customer data, GPU compute for inference. /p pWhat sits at the customer end is often not our choice. One site will be a Jetson we install, the next a server in their rack, the next something in their cloud. You will find out on arrival. /p pThat is what we run, not what you must keep. Part of what we are hiring is your judgement about what should change. /p pFFmpeg, OpenCV and the rest are the barebone of the vision stack. /p h3Requirements /h3 pbWhat we think this needs /b /p pThe technical bar below is high, but it is not what makes this role hard to fill. Plenty of people clear it. The rarer part is the first three. /p ullibYou can carry the company, not only the code. /b You can sit with a terminal operator, understand what their day costs them, and turn that into a deployment they will pay for. You can represent us to a partner or an investor without a founder translating. /li libYou build the team, not only the system. /b You will hire the people who come after you, set the bar they are measured against. You know what a rushed early hire costs, and you would rather wait for the right one. /li libJudgement about what matters. /b You set the technical agenda rather than receive it, and you are as clear about what we should not build as what we should. /li libA deliverer who has seen scale. /b You ship things that work now, and you have been somewhere that scaled, so you know which shortcuts you will pay for later. What you write in year one does not have to be the code that carries us to hundreds of facilities. It has to be the code that gets a customer live. /li libProduction ML, not research ML. /b You have taken models from a notebook to systems other people depend on, and you have lived with them afterwards. /li libReal depth in computer vision and cameras. /b Enough to make architecture calls confidently, and challenge Dario usefully. /li libHands on the hardware. /b You do not need to be an embedded or electrical engineer, but you are familiar enough to get a box running without waiting for one. If you have squeezed models onto small hardware before, that helps. /li libIn front of customers. /b You are comfortable on a customer site, in their terms, without a founder in the room. /li libFull-stack pragmatism. /b You can ship functional user-facing code end to end. /li libStartup DNA. /b Comfortable with pace, ambiguity, and a roadmap that changes when a customer teaches us something. /li libEnglish fluent. /b Italian and German are a plus. /li /ul pbSignals this is NOT for you /b /p ulliYou want to lead a team more than you want to build. For the first few months, you are the team. /li liYou want a roadmap to execute. Here you help write it, with two founders who want your opinion as much as your code. /li liRemote for you means fully asynchronous and no travel. A real part of this job happens at customer sites or in front of a physical product in a lab. /li /ul h3Benefits /h3 pbHow we work /b /p pWhere you work from is your call as long as the timezone is compatible (CET ±2). If you’d like our office in Lugano is ready to welcome you. /p pDuring onboarding we will ask you to be in Lugano for a few weeks. It is there to accelerate getting to know each other, get the handover done properly, and build a foundation before you are working at a distance. After that we meet in person regularly, roughly once or twice a month early on, less often as the processes settle. /p pRemote here means asynchronous by default and written by default. It does not mean isolated, and it does not mean stationary: part of this job happens in front of customers, at their gates and on their production lines, looking at the actual containers and the actual machines. Expect to travel often. /p pbCompensation /b /p ullibBase: /b CHF 80,000 to 130,000, depending on location and seniority b+ Equity /b. /li libFull time. /b /li /ul pThis is the starting point, not the shape of the thing. Scope, equity and salary all move as the company does, and we would rather talk about that in the first conversation than the last. /p pbWhat else we offer /b /p ullibOwnership. /b Direct control of Flycatcher's technical direction, architecture and product engineering. /li libVelocity. /b Decisions in hours, your code in production in weeks. No silos, no hierarchy. /li libA culture of builders. /b Ownership, speed and intellectual honesty. We share context openly and solve problems together. /li libElite ecosystem. /b NVIDIA Inception, MassChallenge, and active research partnerships with IDSIA, USI and SUPSI. /li libGrowth beyond the code. /b Customer negotiations, investor conversations and hiring decisions, from day one. How far that goes is set by how fast we grow, not by a ladder someone wrote in advance. /li /ul /p #J-18808-Ljbffr
