CNC Engineer, Physical AI

About Vision Lab

Vision Lab is a San Francisco startup building large-scale industrial datasets for advanced AI and robotics teams.

We're a Y Combinator company. We work with many of the world's foundational AI labs. We just closed a seed round led by Race Capital, early backers of Databricks and Groq, with angels from OpenAI, NVIDIA, xAI, and Google DeepMind.

https://race.capital/blog/our-investment-in-vision-lab-the-industrial-data-layer-for-physical-ai

Overview

We're building the data layer for physical intelligence.

AI can write code and pass the bar exam, but it doesn't know what a machinist knows. It can't look at a part print and see the setups, the workholding, the tool that won't reach — the judgment that took you years on the floor to build. Teaching machines that judgment is one of the hardest open problems in AI, and it can't be solved by ML engineers alone. It takes machinists.

That's the practice we're building, and we're hiring a CNC engineer in Ho Chi Minh City to build it in Vietnam.

The role

CNC Engineer, Physical AI. You join at the ground floor of a new practice and shape how it runs.

Most machining roles use software as a tool. This one is different: your shop-floor judgment becomes the standard frontier AI is trained and measured against. When a machine eventually understands how a print becomes setups, toolpaths and chips, part of what it knows will trace back to what you decided was good enough.

You won't start from zero — the practice is live, the standard is written, and the first Vietnamese partners are already working with us. You take it national.

A sense of the work:

• Be the bar the machines have to clear. Review real machining packages — part models, CAM programs, posted code, setup sheets, tooling and fixturing — against exacting specifications from frontier AI labs. Deep technical judgment, every day

• Define what "good" means. Build the review methodology for machining work nobody has standardized yet, so tight that any two reviewers land on the same verdict

• Call the shots on realism. The hardest question you'll answer daily: would a shop actually have run this, or does it just look like it? Nobody can automate that yet

• Work the shop floor. Open up the Vietnamese precision-manufacturing market — HCMC, Binh Duong, Dong Nai, and beyond. Phone, Zalo, and in person. Engineer to engineer, in a machinist's own language

• Give feedback partners respect. Clear, specific, technical — so shops get better instead of walking away

• Teach your judgment to software. Work with our engineers to turn what you see into checks that run at scale

• Grow beyond the machine. This role is built to own the Vietnam market — partners, standard, and the team under it — working directly with an international company backed by the frontier of AI

What we want

Someone who understands machining at the shop-floor level, not the slide-deck level. You don't need an ML background — your machining depth is the qualification. Curiosity about AI is.

• A degree in mechanical, manufacturing or a related engineering field. If you don't have one but you're exceptional on the machine, apply anyway and tell us what you've made

• 5+ years hands-on CNC machining with milling at the core — setups, programming, and first articles you owned yourself, not just cycle-start

• CAM fluency: you program in Mastercam, Fusion 360, Siemens NX, hyperMILL or similar — and you can read posted code (Fanuc, Siemens, Heidenhain) and spot what's wrong with it. Reading someone else's program and judging it is half this job

• You've worked to an international standard: aerospace, medical device, automotive tier-1, Japanese precision, or export job shops — real GD&T, process sheets, first-article inspection, traceability

• Deep process judgment: workholding and fixturing, tool selection, feeds and speeds across materials, why the finish pass chattered and what you'd change

• 3-axis mastery; 4- and 5-axis a strong plus

• Strong English — required. You'll work daily with an international team and write reviews others act on. Native Vietnamese for the shop floor

• You genuinely like talking to people: a lot of this job is picking up the phone, and a "no" doesn't slow you down

• Organized and clear in writing: reviews and reports that others can follow

• Beneficial: CMM and metrology; WorldSkills or skills-competition background; AS9100 / ISO 13485 / IATF 16949 environments; CAD modeling; experience training junior machinists

Comp and logistics

• Top-of-market monthly salary (VND), scaled to experience and fit. Equity for the right candidate

• Based in Ho Chi Minh City — hybrid, with regular travel to partner shops. Relocation support available if you're elsewhere in Vietnam

• Work directly with our international team, with exposure to the AI labs defining this field

• Some opportunity to travel to our SF HQ or other partner markets

How to apply

Apply here, and in your note tell us three things: which CAM software you program in, the most complex part you have programmed and run yourself, and one time you opened someone else's program and found something wrong with it. Short answers are fine — we care about the thinking, not the length.