Director of AI & Biometrics
Tools for Humanity is a technology company building products for humans in the age of AI. It contributes to World and develops proof-of-human hardware and software, including the Orb, alongside World App services for World ID and digital-asset management.
Maintainer signals as of 8/12/2026
Projects
About Tools for Humanity
Tools for Humanity is a technology company founded in 2019 and headquartered in San Francisco and Munich. It builds and operates services including World ID App and World App, which provide interfaces for creating and using World ID, accessing Mini Apps, and managing digital assets through a self-custodial wallet. It also develops the Orb and Orb Mini proof-of-human hardware and software, using encrypted iris-imaging processes and open-source components, and leads design and planning for World Spaces.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will lead the team responsible for World’s biometric recognition technology, including iris and face recognition and fraud defenses. You will set the technical direction across data collection, dataset governance, model training, evaluation, deployment, production monitoring, and iteration. You will define performance goals, establish engineering and scientific standards, partner across hardware, product, and security, and grow and lead a high-performing biometrics organization.
Requirements
- Science or engineering background in computer vision, machine learning, robotics, signal processing, or a related field
- Experience with modern and traditional computer vision and machine learning
- Understanding of the full machine learning lifecycle
- Experience delivering production-grade ML systems
- Experience deploying systems on mobile devices or performance-constrained environments
- Significant experience leading engineering or applied research teams
- Cross-functional leadership experience
- Experience with management, mentoring, hiring, performance management, and team scaling
- Experience with iris recognition or face recognition is valued
- Experience with presentation attack detection and biometric fraud prevention is valued
- Familiarity with privacy-enhancing technologies is valued
- Experience operating ML systems at very large scale is valued
Responsibilities
- Own the vision, roadmap, and execution for the biometric recognition stack
- Lead data acquisition, dataset governance, training, evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and iteration
- Define performance goals for accuracy, user experience, and fraud resistance
- Establish reproducible experimentation, code quality, testing, review, MLOps, and documentation standards
- Partner with hardware, product, and security teams on technical strategy
- Attract, develop, and coach a diverse team
- Lead hiring, team design, and organizational scaling
- Represent biometrics leadership and communicate trade-offs, risks, and progress
