Founding AI Developer

Summary

We’re hiring an experienced Python developer who is obsessed with the latest generative AI models (LLMs and Diffusion) and curious about how they can be applied in gaming. This isn’t a research job, but having a background in AI/ML and a deep understanding of how LLMs and diffusion models work is important, as long as it’s paired with a proven ability to ship product. We anticipate little in the way of foundational research, but a lot of creative prototyping, selecting the right models, fine-tuning, and optimizing for a great end user experience.

As part of the founding team, you’ll be in at the ground floor to define the product, the culture, and the overall AI architecture and pipeline for the company.

Who we are

Storycraft is founded on the belief that anyone should be able to tell their stories through games.

Our product is an AI-Generated-Content (AIGC) gaming platform that reimagines how story driven video games are created, by letting creators deliver daily, episodic game content to their player base. Storycraft uses generative AI to create maps, characters, in-game objects, and to power a new type of creative gameplay where truly anything can happen.

The co-founders Andy and Adam are serial AI and gaming entrepreneurs. For Storycraft they have partnered with and raised capital from some of the best regarded firms in both gaming (LVP - investors of Supercell, Unity, etc) and consumer products (SignalFire - investors in Grammarly, Clubhouse, etc). We are currently hiring the founding team and are looking for folks who are keen to innovate at the intersection of generative AI, social gaming, and storytelling.

Day-to-day you’ll be supported by a full-stack, code-writing CTO, and collaborating with a Senior Backend Developer (responsible for the web services that work with your models) and a Senior Game Developer (responsible for the game clients that display AI creations to users).

What you’ll be doing

• Select the initial set of AI models for creating in-game stories, characters, objects, and maps.
• Work with our backend developer to provide the AI Model APIs for user profiles, character creation, object and map creation for roleplaying videogames.
• Design, prototype, and test different approaches that leverage LLMs for game world creation, intelligent agent design, narrative generation, and emergent gameplay scenarios.
• Design, prototype, and test different approaches for generating animated in-game characters and objects.
• Design, prototype, and test different approaches for generating concept art.
• Establish our tools and processes for systematically testing the output of AI systems in a creative domain where ground truth can be hard to find.
• Identify opportunities for dataset creation and curation to improve the performance of our AI models.
• Finetune existing models to better suit the needs of our creative gaming product.
• Share some of your weirdest, funniest, and most inspiring AI creations with our Discord community.
• Work with the team to prototype approaches for connecting AI hallucinations to gameplay leading to a new, open ended gameplay system: Storytelling in games where anything can happen.

About you

Things you’ve done

• Advanced in your development career to a senior level position or beyond.
• Written tons of testable, well-architected Python code.
• Followed the latest developments in generative AI. You understand tech like ControlNet, LoRA, LLaMA, GPT-4, and could see yourself teaching others about them.
• Built and deployed software products at scale in a professional team environment to real end users.
• Worked with the ecosystem of Python and web tools needed for experimenting with AI models.
• Stood up your own development environments for prototyping and worked with your teammates to integrate the best results for production.
• Considered and communicated performance tradeoffs to help product teams make the right decisions for end users.
• You know how to work remotely, write well, and understand the unique demands of a remote culture in terms of communication and collaboration.

Bonus points

• Shipped AI code in an entertainment or creative setting like gaming, art, digital humanities, music, etc.
• Played a lot of games and formed strong opinions on what you like and don’t like about them.
• You have experience with asset pipelines in professional game development teams.
• You have experience with applications of computer vision.

Why you should work with us

• You'll have a front-row seat at an early-stage startup with two experienced founders. If you hope to start your own thing someday, this would be great preparation.
• You will have a huge impact here. You’ll be shipping every week and helping us define the shape of our flagship product.
• We have experience working on remote teams and understand how to play to its strengths. You won’t be walking into a calendar filled with back to back Zoom calls.
• If you have been looking for your chance to get into gaming, this is it.
• We have weekly conversations about D&D and genre cinema, do game breakdowns, and play tabletop games together.
• You crave innovation. Our company is exploring uncharted territory in gaming, AI, and social consumer experiences.
• You’ll report to founders who can help you grow in your career while empathizing with the challenges of your craft

• Andy is a certified coach and an experienced AI founder with an exit under his belt.
• Adam has experience leading teams and building in Frontend Development, Design, Product, and Marketing.

Why you would not want to work with us

• We are a new startup so we are still defining and iterating on processes. If you need a lot of structure to thrive, you will not be comfortable here.
• We have 18-24 months of runway with our current pre-seed raise. We will have to raise more capital to achieve profitability. We are confident in our ability to do this if we hire great people and execute well together, but this may feel overly risky to you if you’ve never experienced this stage of a startup before.
• We plan to meet up in person a few times a year, but have no current plans to establish an office or a work-in-person culture. If you thrive in an office, this will not be the best place for you.

How to apply

Write a short introductory email and tell us about yourself. Attach your resume, and send it to both founders at adam@storycraft.gg and andy@storycraft.gg - we’ll reply to every application we receive.

Your email should include one paragraph on how your skillset will help our community build fun story driven video games.

You should also include one example of creative work you built with AI. It can be video, audio, images, text, or any combination! Tell us what models you used, what your approach was, and why you were compelled to do it.