Engagement Lead, AI Strategy
Unusual
Software Engineering, Data Science
San Francisco, CA, USA
USD 140-165 / month
Posted on May 13, 2026
Unusual
Helping position brands so that AI agents choose and recommend them.
Engagement Lead, AI Strategy
$140 - $165•San Francisco, CA, US
Job type
Full-time Role
Operations Experience
3+ years Visa
US citizen/visa only Connect directly with founders of the best YC-funded startups.
Apply to role › Will Jack
Founder
Will Jack
Founder
About the role
The Future of Agentic Buying
People are increasingly trusting AI to help them buy things. First AI agents were information aggregators, trusted to search and summarize. Now they're trusted to advise on key decision-making. Increasingly, they're becoming autonomous buyers: agents that shop, evaluate, and transact on behalf of humans.
When AI is the audience, how it perceives your value proposition becomes one of the most consequential things a company can understand about itself.
We apply the principles of AI interpretability research to study how models actually think about companies, and underneath the surface noise we find remarkably stable beliefs, formed from the proof points a company has put into the world (often inadvertently).
Companies starting to take this seriously are realizing something uncomfortable: in an AI-evaluated market, marketing claims without substance to back them up don’t work anymore. Conversely, companies that deliver on their value proposition have unbounded opportunity to reach and acquire new buyers. AI agents are judging every brand's value promise, and are teaching humans how to do the same.
About Unusual
Unusual is the AI interpretability platform for marketing and GTM teams. We help companies shape how AI models actually think about their brand and value proposition.
Why this role exists
Every company has a unique path to get ready for the rapidly approaching future of agentic buying. When agentic buying arrives for their industry, a company’s ability to thrive will depend on their ability to (1) understand how AI agents evaluate them, (2) enable AI agents to interact with their business, and (3) make the right strategic bets that continually refine their value proposition as perceived by AI.
We build the platform and we apply the methodology directly alongside companies and consultancies. Being at the forefront of the practice of AI brand management, we are committed to learning alongside our partners and sharing what we learn. This role exists to be the trusted voice on the ground with each client; the person who turns the platform and methodology into decisions that move the business.
Who we're looking for
You're a strategic problem-solver who wants to work on critical problems. You can hold your own across the table from a CMO, CRO, or CEO, and you can push on the assumptions behind their most consequential decisions. You're already using tools like Claude Code to do your work better, and you want a role where that orientation is the work itself.
You want the leverage that comes from learning and teaching a practice that's category-defining, with a research team that's done the work to make this approach possible and a platform already producing insights no one else can.
What you'd own
You'd be the engagement lead for a portfolio of companies who want to shape how AI models perceive their brand and value proposition. That means:
- Ramping quickly on each client's business and operating model so they want you in the room when strategic GTM decisions are being made
- Translating our interpretability analyses, grounded in each client's business reality, into clear and actionable moves on content, positioning, and proof points
- Operating at the leadership level, bringing the clarity that helps client executives act
- Using Claude Code and our internal platform to generate analyses, prototype features, and contribute back to the systems your teammates rely on
Capabilities we look for
- Stakeholder map-making. You can read a room, see the dynamics, and figure out how to deliver value in a way that lets every stakeholder win.
- First-principles communication. You can write a tight brief and walk a CEO through it without losing the room or oversimplifying. You can also write it for a senior IC who'll do the implementation work.
- AI-native orientation. Claude Code, MCPs, and prototyping with agents are already part of how you work.
- The intangibles. Curiosity, ownership, truth-seeking, comfort with constructive disagreement, self-awareness when things get hard.
If you haven't gone deep on Claude Code yet but you're a fast learner who wants to build that fluency, we still want to hear from you. The later stages of the interview process include a collaborative exercise using Claude Code, so spend some time with it ahead of time.
What we offer
- A research team that's done the work to make this approach possible, and a platform already producing insights no one else can (we’ll share a confidential walkthrough of current customers and impact generated, post-NDA)
- A small team of people who care deeply about their craft and about each other
- A front-row seat to a shift in how every company gets evaluated over the next decade
- The chance to build the playbook for a role that doesn't fully exist anywhere else yet
About Unusual
Unusual helps brands discover and change how AI models talk about them.
Unusual surveys models with thousands of targeted probing questions to understand how they form their opinions. We examine the sources they pull from, and find patterns in their reasoning, that let us create content and PR engineered to change those models' minds.
A typical Unusual customer sees more than a 40% increase in traffic from AI models within a month of going live.
Beyond driving more traffic, customers have used Unusual to shift models' perception of their brand from "niche" to "enterprise-platform", from "scrappy" to "customer-obsessed", and from "good for startups" to "a solid bet for the middle market".
We work with top companies including Reducto, Monarch Money, and more.
Our team is ex- MIT, Princeton, and SpaceX
Why work at Unusual?
- You have a chance to help define an entire new technical field and market. We're essentially doing applied psychology on LLMs, and we think that's pretty cool, and extremely valuable.
- We're riding a huge tailwind. While many AI companies may be threatened by a bubble, we think the usage of tools like ChatGPT is only going to increase. The need for our product, is only going to get greater.
- We aim to be the premium solution in the space -- we pull no punches when it comes to making the product smarter and better, and pricing accordingly.
- As an engineer, this means you can do your best technical work at Unusual.
- As a salesperson, it means you can confidently tell customers they are getting the best money can buy.
Culture and Values
- Character comes first. We only work with people we deeply trust and respect. We think this makes work more fun, freeing, and effective.
- We try to remain down to earth and in touch with customer's real pains. Everyone at Unusual works in the customer service department.
- We do whatever it takes. When we know what we must do, we don't take shortcuts or shy away from huge ugly challenges. That means we usually work pretty hard, and occasionally have to do some big sprints.