AI Research Engineer

Role overview An AI Research Engineer role focused on exploring the frontier of artificial intelligence while maintaining a strong emphasis on practical, deployable outcomes. The position sits within a research lab setting, investigating emerging techniques and translating them into production-ready systems that solve real business problems. Engineers in this role balance intellectual curiosity with disciplined experimentation and shipping discipline.

Responsibilities - Evaluate emerging open-source and proprietary models for capability, cost, latency, and fit with client requirements - Lead work on local and self-hosted model deployment, including fine-tuning, quantization, and infrastructure setup for privacy, compliance, and performance needs - Design and benchmark advanced retrieval architectures beyond standard RAG, including hypothetical document embeddings, multi-vector retrieval, graph-based knowledge structures, and hybrid search - Prototype multi-agent coordination systems and document tradeoffs, performance characteristics, and recommended patterns - Build proof-of-concept systems that inform technical strategy and become the basis for client-facing solutions - Track the AI research landscape, separate genuine advances from hype, and brief internal stakeholders on what is ready for production use

Requirements - Strong machine learning fundamentals with hands-on experience building and shipping AI systems - Proficiency with modern open-source model families and the tradeoffs between model size, speed, and capability - Experience with retrieval-augmented generation, vector databases, and embedding strategies - Ability to run rigorous experiments, measure improvements, and write up findings clearly - Comfort working across both research exploration and production engineering contexts - Self-direction in identifying which techniques are worth investing in

Nice to have - Background publishing or presenting research at conferences or in technical communities - Familiarity with orchestration frameworks, evaluation harnesses, and AI observability tooling - Experience deploying models on varied infrastructure including GPUs and edge environments

Benefits and work setup - Remote (US), full-time - Salary range $150,000 to $210,000 - High-end hardware including MacBook Pro with GPU access, external display, and peripherals - All AI tools and subscriptions covered, plus compute credits for experiments - 401(k) with company match, 12 weeks paid parental leave - Home office setup stipend of $1,000 and quarterly team offsites - Conference attendance and speaking opportunities supported