About ACU Research Institute

 

ACU Research Institute is an independent, early-stage research lab exploring the convergence of Attention, Consciousness, and Computation. We build AI-powered products, publish open research, and ship real systems at the frontier of intelligent agents.

This is a founder-led operation. Small team, high autonomy, equity-heavy. If you want structure and a 401k, this isn’t it. If you want to build things that don’t exist yet, keep reading.

 

Position Overview

 

We are seeking a Junior AI Engineer to help build and ship AI-powered products – from RAG pipelines and LLM integrations to multi-agent systems and real-time inference.

You’ll work directly with the founder. No layers. No committees. You build, you ship, you learn.

Job Type: Full-time, Contract or Permanent

Location: Remote

 

Key Responsibilities

 

  • Design and implement RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) pipelines using vector databases and embedding models
  • Build and maintain LLM-powered applications with real-time performance requirements
  • Develop agent-based architectures (MCP, A2A protocols)
  • Write clean, modular Python and deploy on Linux infrastructure
  • Experiment with new models, techniques, and architectures – then ship the ones that work

 

Qualifications & Attributes

 

  • Strong Python fundamentals
  • Familiarity with LLMs, embeddings, and vector databases (ChromaDB, Pinecone, FAISS, etc.)
  • Comfort with Linux, Git, and command-line workflows
  • Ability to read research papers and translate ideas into working code
  • Self-directed – you don’t wait to be told what to do

 

Nice to Have

 

  • Understanding of Transformer architecture and attention mechanisms
  • Experience with model tuning and evaluation
  • Familiarity with TTS/ASR pipelines
  • Familiarity with Affective Computing
  • Contributions to open-source projects

 

What We Offer

 

  • Work on genuinely novel AI research and products
  • Direct mentorship from a senior AI engineer
  • Flexible, remote-first environment
  • Equity participation for the right candidate

 

How to Apply

 

Send an email to davidkwokhochan@gmail.com with:

  1. A brief intro – who you are, what excites you
  2. A link to your GitHub or a project you’re proud of
  3. Why this role interests you

No cover letter templates. No corporate speak. Just be real.

 

Application Questions

 

  • What’s a project you built that you’re genuinely proud of? Why?
  • What’s the last technical rabbit hole you went down voluntarily?
  • If you could mass-deploy one AI system tomorrow, what would it do?