---
title: 'AI/ML Engineer, Lead at Sandbar'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/ai-ml-engineer-lead-sandbar-new-york-qcze9x2ck40d'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-07'
---

# AI/ML Engineer, Lead at Sandbar

- **Company:** Sandbar
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-02-08
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sandbar/c80cf04b-b597-4bc9-ae06-d920a7c88a27

## Job description

## About Sandbar

Sandbar is an interface company in New York City. We aim to augment individuals so we can each think, act, and move more freely. Our team has built SW, ML, and HW products across Meta, CTRL-labs, Google, Apple, Fitbit, Peloton, and Equinox.

Our first product, Stream, is a self extension—a private voice ring and conversational interface. Stream has been featured in WSJ, Bloomberg, & Wired, and begins shipping in Summer '26.

Join us in creating technology that extends human thinking.

## About

We’re looking for a Lead ML Engineer to build Stream, a new conversational interface. As an ML Lead, you will architect, build, and deploy a new interface which spans agentic control, multimodal interactions, and information retrieval. This role is perfect for someone who cares deeply about real-world ML deployment and human-in-the-loop agentic interactions.

## Responsibilities

- Lead architecture, strategy, and tradeoffs for our ML-based products
- Design and improve user-facing model-based experiences, including agentic control, conversational interactions, and information retrieval.
- Develop infrastructure to rapidly develop, evaluate, and deploy models
- Optimize inference pipelines for latency, reliability, and concurrency
- Work closely with other ML/AI engineers, infrastructure engineers, designers, and cofounders on existing and future products

## Qualifications

- 6+ years in machine learning experience
- Experience shipping ML-based products is required
- Experience in large-language model evaluation and post-training is required
- Experience in audio / voice ML is a plus
- Comfortable writing production-grade software
- Passion for human-computer interaction
- Experience setting technical direction and driving execution with multidisciplinary teams

FTE Benefits

- Health, vision, and dental benefits
- Company-sponsored 401(k)
- Unlimited PTO and sick time
- Early stage equity

## About Sandbar

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Sandbar builds a conversational interface called Stream, a physical wearable ring and AI-powered software layer designed to augment thinking and action by allowing users to interact with technology through natural voice conversation while on the move.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed & Series A funded)
- **Headquarters**: New York City, United States
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Mina Fahmi (CEO) and Kirak Hong (CTO)

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Human-AI interface, Consumer Electronics, Artificial Intelligence
- Target customers: B2C (early adopters, knowledge workers, creators) and B2B elements (developer platform for AI agents)
- Mission or purpose statement: To augment individuals so they can each think, act, and move more freely. The company believes in building a "more human" interface with technology.

## Products & Services
- **[Stream]**: A physical wearable device (a ring) that, when paired with a mobile app and AI backend, creates an ambient, voice-first conversational interface. It is designed to capture thoughts, orchestrate AI agents, and provide context-aware assistance without needing to look at a screen. The device is currently in pre-order, with Batch 3 available after Batches 1 and 2 sold out. It is described as a "self extension that keeps your thinking moving." The company is also building a developer platform (API/agents) for third-party integrations.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed.
- **Total Funding**: $36M (based on public announcements: $13M Seed round in November 2025, and a $23M Series A in March 2026).
- **Key Metric**: Total funding raised ($36M), with Stream’s first two pre-order batches selling out completely.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Adjacent, Kindred Ventures (co-leads of Series A), True Ventures, Upfront Ventures, Betaworks.
- **Growth Signals**: Rapid headcount growth (+172.7% YoY to 16 employees), significant venture capital backing within 2.5 years of founding, and high consumer demand for its product (sold out pre-order batches). The company is actively hiring across 13 open roles, indicating a major scaling phase.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Full-Stack Vertical Integration**: They control the hardware (ring), firmware, Bluetooth, mobile app, backend, AI models, and retrieval layers. This allows them to optimize for latency and fluency in a way that pure software or pure hardware companies cannot.
- **New Design Primitives**: Sandbar is not replicating a screen interface with voice. They are inventing a new UX paradigm for "conversation" that relies on deep memory, context, and asynchronous action, without the need for a visual display.
- **Agent Orchestration Layer**: Stream is designed to be the persistent, always-on layer that knows a user's context, preferences, and day, enabling it to automatically spin up and orchestrate multiple specialized AI agents without the user needing to manage them manually.

## Strategic Focus
- Product delivery and scaling: The immediate priority is shipping Stream to its first customers in Summer 2026 and fulfilling growing pre-order demand.
- Talent acquisition: The company is aggressively hiring across machine learning, software engineering, hardware, product design, and marketing to build a world-class team to scale the product.
- Platform development: Expanding the developer platform and agent ecosystem to make Stream the "layer that sits underneath all of it" for the emerging agentic world.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-Driven & Cutting-Edge**: The opportunity to work on a genuinely new computing paradigm—a conversational interface that could fundamentally change how people interact with technology in their daily lives.
- **Talent Density & Pedigree**: The team is small (16 people) but composed of engineers and operators from top-tier companies like Meta, Apple, Peloton, and Equinox, offering a high-velocity, high-impact environment.
- **Full-Stack & Multi-Disciplinary**: Engineers and designers work across a wide stack (hardware, firmware, software, ML, AI) on challenging real-time problems.
- **Culture**: The company describes itself as "small," with a focus on speed, iteration, and craft. The founders are active and visible, sharing the company’s technical philosophy publicly.
- **Location & Flexibility**: The company is headquartered in New York City (HQ) with a presence in Germany. While office presence is implied (hardware development), there is a distributed element to the team. Perks or specific policy (remote/hybrid) are not explicitly stated but are likely high-flexibility given the small team and talent profile.

## Sources
1. [sandbar.com](https://www.sandbar.com/about-us)
2. [sandbar.com](https://www.sandbar.com/careers)
3. [sandbar.com](https://www.sandbar.com/technology)
4. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/sandbarinc)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sandbar)

## Other roles at Sandbar

- [Lab Technician](https://feeny.ai/job/lab-technician-sandbar-new-york-v4hbw4dzdxhm) — New York, NY
- [Senior Firmware Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-firmware-engineer-sandbar-new-york-q1fcdff136ez) — New York, NY
- [Head of Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-engineering-sandbar-new-york-vsgk35q0sjpa) — New York, NY
- [Software Engineer, Web & Desktop](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-web-desktop-sandbar-new-york-6ewhkag2ev2n) — New York, NY
- [Creative Lead, Content](https://feeny.ai/job/creative-lead-content-sandbar-new-york-g11cytkqhqy9) — New York, NY
- [Growth Marketing & Community Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/growth-marketing-community-lead-sandbar-new-york-daak400v3ess) — New York, NY
- [Operations Program Manager, Hardware](https://feeny.ai/job/operations-program-manager-hardware-sandbar-new-york-5m6vkgekkbzw) — New York, NY
- [Lead Product Designer](https://feeny.ai/job/lead-product-designer-sandbar-new-york-k3awfyaycbge) — New York, NY
- [ML Engineer, Audio](https://feeny.ai/job/ml-engineer-audio-sandbar-new-york-vwj1stj39j2y) — New York, NY
- [Senior Software Engineer, Infrastructure](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-infrastructure-sandbar-new-york-xb0k445ez6fs) — New York, NY