FreeFlow Ventures

Data - AI / ML Engineer 

Full-Time   |   On-site, Kolkata   |   Immediate Joining   |   4+ years experience

ABOUT US 

Company Name: Freeflow ventures

We are a venture building and investment firm focused on emerging markets across India, the Middle East, and Africa. We work with early-stage startups -diagnosing gaps, structuring interventions, and preparing them for investor-readiness through a proprietary data and intelligence platform.

Our platform combines automated data verification, startup scoring, and structured workflow automation to bring consistency and credibility to early-stage investment decisions. We are at an active build and expansion phase, and this role sits at the core of that infrastructure.

ROLE OVERVIEW

We are looking for a Data - AI / ML Engineer who can own both the data pipelines that bring verified information into our platform and the intelligence models that turn that information into reliable startup scores.

This is a dual-responsibility role. You will be expected to build and maintain robust data infrastructure as well as develop, calibrate, and improve machine learning models. Both are equally important to the platform.

You will work closely with the Platform Owner and alongside a Backend Engineer who owns system integrations and workflow logic. Your work produces the scored intelligence output. The Backend Engineer's work connects that output to platform actions. The two roles are tightly interdependent and require close daily collaboration, especially in the first 30 days.

Note: You are the first technical hire on the platform team. The Backend Engineer joins the same week. Clear communication, well-defined handoff points, and shared documentation between the two of you are non-negotiable from Day 1.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

Data Pipeline

• Build and maintain pipelines that collect, clean, and normalize data from multiple external sources into a consistent, usable format
• Design connector architecture that allows individual data sources to be added, swapped, or removed without rebuilding the entire pipeline
• Implement automated data quality checks that catch bad data before it reaches the scoring layer -anomaly detection, constraint enforcement, and schema validation
• Build an automated eligibility screening system that verifies whether a startup has sufficient verified data before assessment begins
• Ensure the pipeline is resilient -critical data signals must have backup sources so a single vendor failure does not disrupt platform output
• Structure data storage to support different regulatory requirements across multiple countries -data from different regions must be handled according to the rules of that region

AI and Machine Learning

• Audit the existing scoring engine before making any changes -understand what it does, how it was built, and what would be lost if it were modified
• Calibrate scoring models against real portfolio data so that scores are meaningful, consistent, and comparable across different startup types and stages
• Build confidence scoring logic that determines when the system is certain enough to act autonomously and when it should route to human review
• Ensure every model output is explainable -investors must be able to see exactly which data points drove a score, not just the final number
• Build a feedback loop so that real-world outcomes feed back into the model over time, making it progressively more accurate
• Maintain a structured data store of assessment outputs and outcomes that the model uses to improve

Working With the Backend Engineer

• Define a clear data contract at the handoff point -what data you produce, in what format, and what the Backend Engineer can expect to receive
• Collaborate on trigger logic -what score thresholds or confidence drops should fire what system actions
• Align on data schema requirements so that the APIs the Backend Engineer builds conform to the structure your pipeline produces
• Communicate blockers early -the pipeline and backend system are built simultaneously, so delays on one side directly affect the other
• Document everything you build so the Backend Engineer and Platform Owner can understand, debug, and extend it without depending on you for every question

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

Skills are divided into two categories. Must Have means the role cannot function without it. Good to Have means it gives you an edge.

Skill

Priority

Data Engineering

Building and maintaining data pipelines from multiple sources

Must Have

Data normalization and schema design

Must Have

Automated data quality validation

Must Have

API integration across different source types

Must Have

Pipeline orchestration and scheduling

Must Have

Cloud infrastructure -storage, compute, and deployment

Must Have

Version control and code documentation

Must Have

AI and Machine Learning

Building and calibrating supervised machine learning models

Must Have

Model explainability -making model outputs traceable and interpretable

Must Have

Confidence scoring and threshold calibration

Must Have

Experiment tracking and model versioning

Must Have

Building feedback loops that improve models over time using real-world outcomes

Must Have

Natural language processing or document understanding

Good to Have

Vector databases and semantic search

Good to Have

Collaboration and Context

Ability to define clear data contracts and handoff points with backend engineers

Must Have

Clear written documentation of pipeline logic, model decisions, and failure modes

Must Have

Prior experience working in or with early-stage startups

Good to Have

Exposure to financial data, investment platforms, or data verification systems

Good to Have

WHAT WE OFFER

• Competitive compensation based on experience -discussed during the interview process
• Ownership of both the data and intelligence layers from Day 1 -this is not a support or maintenance role
• Direct access to the Platform Owner and Founder 
• Close collaboration with a Backend Engineer from Day 1 -the two roles are designed to work as a unit
• Work on a genuinely novel problem in an emerging market context
• On-site Kolkata with a small, high-accountability team
• Opportunity to scale the platform across multiple international markets