AI Technology Leader / Founding Partner – China
(Confidential Executive Search Brief)
RestartUs is expanding its AI leadership footprint in Asia and is seeking an AI Technology Leader / Founding Partner (China) to help shape the next phase of its core technology strategy, product evolution, and strategic market positioning.
This is a senior, founding-level role for a highly accomplished AI professional who has operated at the frontier of large-scale AI systems and understands the strategic business implications of technology and product excellence for attracting market attention and investor engagement. The successful candidate will work directly with the founders to influence product thesis, model architecture, AI strategy, and platform evolution, supporting funding, partnerships, and long-term market growth.
About RestartUs
RestartUs is developing cutting-edge WorkTech AI solutions and is now setting up its next revolutionary project upgrade. The company has attracted expressions of interest from leading global investors, including Sequoia-Peak XV, Visa Ventures, and B Capital—firms known for backing category-defining technology companies such as Airbnb, Zoom, TikTok, Stripe, Flipkart, Grab, and ByteDance.
Building on this foundation, RestartUs is strengthening its AI leadership to support ambitious growth and expansion in Asia, with China as a strategic priority. This is a role for someone who can combine technical excellence, product intuition, and commercial vision, helping position the company's AI capabilities as both technically superior and investor-ready.
Role Mandate
As AI Technology Leader / Founding Partner, you will operate at the core of the company's technical and product direction, playing a central role in shaping the business and market impact of AI decisions.
Key responsibilities include:
Defining, refining, and continuously evolving the AI product thesis, ensuring alignment between technical capability, product performance, and investor positioning
Evaluating, selecting, and iterating on LLM architectures, foundation models, and multimodal systems to support scalable, production-grade product improvements
Designing and advancing agentic AI frameworks that enhance product intelligence, autonomy, and strategic differentiation
Leading model evaluation and improvement strategies, including benchmarking, fine-tuning, and iteration cycles informed by real-world usage and performance signals
Guiding decisions on training vs inference economics, latency optimisation, and cost-performance trade-offs, balancing product quality, scalability, and commercial viability
Assessing build-vs-buy strategies across open-source, proprietary, and hybrid model stacks to accelerate product maturity and speed-to-value
Collaborating on model safety, controllability, and alignment as integral components of robust, trustworthy AI product design
Acting as a senior technical authority while supporting product narrative, investor discussions, and partner engagement, translating deep technical and product insights into strategic business storytelling
Core Skills & Expertise
This role is suited to candidates with exceptional technical depth, product sensibility, and commercial acumen.
Essential technical foundations:
Strong background in computer science, applied mathematics, statistics, or related fields
Deep understanding of machine learning systems, not just algorithms
Proven experience with LLMs, foundation models, or large-scale deep learning architectures
Strong command of automation, optimisation, and system-level AI design
Advanced expertise preferred:
Hands-on exposure to training, fine-tuning, deploying, and iterating large models at scale
Experience with agentic systems, multi-model orchestration, or autonomous AI workflows
Familiarity with evaluation frameworks, RLHF / RLAIF, and post-training optimisation techniques
Ability to reason rigorously about model performance, generalisation, failure modes, and continuous improvement
Business acumen / strategic capabilities:
Ability to translate technical and product decisions into compelling positioning for investors, partners, and market stakeholders
Experience contributing to fundraising processes, investor dialogues, or strategic partnership assessments
Understanding of capital formation, growth dynamics, and long-term market differentiation
Ability to communicate complex technical and product concepts to non-technical audiences with authority
Industry background (highly preferred):
Senior technical or AI leadership experience at organisations such as SenseTime, MiniMax, Baidu, Yitu, or other leading Chinese or Asian AI research and product companies
Experience operating in high-rigour, research-driven, and product-oriented AI environments
What Sets This Role Apart
Founding-level influence over AI direction, product architecture, and strategic positioning
Equity participation aligned with long-term value creation
Direct collaboration with founders and executive leadership
Freedom to shape technology, product evolution, and business strategy without legacy constraints
Opportunity to build a globally relevant AI platform with strong investor and market visibility
This role is intended for individuals who have already demonstrated technical excellence, product judgement, and commercial sophistication, and who are seeking ownership, influence, and long-term impact, rather than title or short-term incentives.
Engagement Details
Title: AI Technology Leader / Founding Partner – China
Engagement Model: Flexible, partner-level involvement
Compensation: Equity participation with scope for executive remuneration aligned to scale milestones
Location: Mainland China
(Candidates must be residing in mainland China, including for remote collaboration)
Confidential Application Process
Interested candidates are invited to submit a CV and a brief note outlining their background and interest.
All discussions will be handled with strict discretion.
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