AI Research Engineer at Handshake | San Francisco

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly crucial across all sectors of society. At Scale AI, our mission is to expedite the advancement of AI applications. With nine years of experience, we have established ourselves as the leading AI data foundry, facilitating groundbreaking developments in AI, including generative AI, defense applications, and autonomous vehicles. Following our recent investment from Meta, we are committed to enhancing our capabilities by developing cutting-edge post-training algorithms that are essential for optimizing complex agents in enterprises globally.The Enterprise ML Research Lab is at the forefront of this AI revolution. We are dedicated to crafting a suite of proprietary research tools and resources that cater to all of our enterprise clients. As a Machine Learning Research Engineer focusing on Agents, you will apply our Agent Reinforcement Learning (RL) training and building algorithms to real-world enterprise datasets across our clients and benchmarks. Your role will involve developing top-tier Agents that achieve state-of-the-art results through a blend of post-training and agent-building algorithms.If you are passionate about influencing the trajectory of the modern Generative AI movement, we would love to hear from you!

At Scale AI, we are at the forefront of artificial intelligence, driving innovation through our advanced data, infrastructure, and tooling that empower the most sophisticated models worldwide. Our teams thrive at the intersection of pioneering research, extensive engineering, and practical deployment, collaborating with leading labs, enterprises, and government entities to explore the vast potential of Generative AI. As AI technology evolves from static models to dynamic, intelligent systems, Scale AI is dedicated to establishing the essential research foundations, evaluation methodologies, and reinforcement learning infrastructure that will shape this transformative era. Join our high-impact research organization, where you will contribute to advancing large language models, post-training evaluation, and agent-based reinforcement learning environments, influencing the future of AI development and implementation. As the Research Scientist Manager, you will spearhead a distinguished team of research scientists and engineers, define the strategic research roadmap, and oversee projects from initial prototyping to final deployment. You will excel in a fast-paced environment, harmonizing deep technical leadership with effective people management, visionary goal setting, and successful delivery.

About Liquid AIFounded as a spin-off from MIT CSAIL, Liquid AI specializes in creating versatile AI systems designed for optimal performance across various deployment platforms, including data center accelerators and on-device hardware. Our technology emphasizes low latency, minimal memory consumption, privacy, and dependability. We collaborate with leading enterprises in sectors such as consumer electronics, automotive, life sciences, and financial services. As we experience rapid growth, we are on the lookout for exceptional talent to join our team.The OpportunityThe Data team at Liquid AI drives the development of our Liquid Foundation Models, focusing on pre-training, vision, audio, and emerging modalities. With the stagnation of public data sources, the effectiveness of our models increasingly relies on specially curated datasets. We are seeking engineers with a machine learning mindset who can efficiently gather, filter, and synthesize high-quality data at scale.At Liquid AI, we regard data as a research challenge rather than an infrastructural issue. Our engineers conduct experiments, design ablations, and assess how data-related decisions impact model quality. We will align you with a team where you can experience rapid growth and make a significant impact, be it in pre-training, post-training reinforcement learning, vision-language, audio, or multimodal applications.While we prefer candidates in San Francisco and Boston, we are open to considering other locations.What We're Looking ForWe are in search of a candidate who:Thinks like a researcher and executes like an engineer: You should be able to formulate hypotheses, conduct experiments, and evaluate results. Our engineers produce research-level code while our researchers implement production systems.Learns quickly and adapts: You will be working in rapidly evolving modalities, so the ability to quickly grasp new domains and thrive in ambiguity is essential.Prioritizes data quality: We hold data quality in high regard; tasks such as filtering, deduplication, augmentation, and evaluation are key responsibilities, not afterthoughts.Solves problems autonomously: Data engineers operate within training groups (pre-training and multimodal). While collaboration is crucial, we expect ownership and self-direction.The WorkDevelop and maintain data processing, filtering, and selection pipelines at scale.Establish pipelines for pretraining, midtraining, supervised fine-tuning, and preference optimization datasets.Design synthetic data generation systems utilizing large language models (LLMs), structured prompting, and domain-specific generative techniques.

Who We AreAt Pave, we are revolutionizing the compensation landscape with our cutting-edge platform that merges the largest real-time compensation dataset with advanced AI and machine learning capabilities. Our state-of-the-art solution empowers over 8,500 businesses to make informed compensation decisions with unparalleled confidence.Renowned companies such as OpenAI, McDonald's, Instacart, Atlassian, Synopsys, Stripe, Databricks, and Waymo leverage Pave to transform their pay strategies, managing over $190 billion in total compensation spend through our innovative workflows. Notably, 70% of the Forbes AI 50 utilize Pave to benchmark their compensation.As we pioneer the transition to real-time and predictive pay solutions, we are proud to have secured $160 million in funding from top-tier investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Y Combinator, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Craft Ventures.The Paige Team @ PavePaige, Pave's AI compensation analyst, represents an innovative autonomous system built atop the world's largest proprietary compensation dataset and our existing workflow engine. This role involves crafting the technical vision and execution for Paige, collaborating with a team of talented engineers and data scientists to develop and market this groundbreaking product. We are seeking individuals with profound AI expertise, strong product intuition, and a founder's mentality to help us drive this initiative forward.

Job Description: Distinguished Engineer, Enterprise AI About Scale AI At Scale AI, we are dedicated to building robust AI systems that inform the world’s most critical decisions. Our Enterprise AI division specializes in delivering high-performance, reliable, and production-ready AI applications across various industries, leveraging our expertise in Generative AI and cutting-edge infrastructure. The Role We are on the lookout for a Distinguished Engineer—an influential technical leader operating at the VP level—to define the vision and technical trajectory of our foundational AI/ML infrastructure that drives enterprise AI applications. This role reports directly to the SVP of Engineering, Enterprise AI, and involves steering the long-term technical strategy for our Scale GenerativeAI Platform (SGP), shaping architectural decisions company-wide, and closely collaborating with engineering and product leaders to deliver advanced AI capabilities to our enterprise clients. As a cross-functional thought leader, you will set benchmarks for technical excellence, mentor senior engineers, and ensure our systems and models are equipped to handle global-scale deployments. This is a unique opportunity to influence the core AI infrastructure and the enterprise applications that build upon it.

Join Our Team as a Machine Learning EngineerSaris-AI is a pioneering applied AI startup, based in San Francisco and Montreal, focused on revolutionizing the banking sector. Our mission is to address a colossal $100 billion/year challenge that is rapidly expanding, innovating the limits of what can be achieved with advanced multi-turn AI systems.We aim to automate complex workflows that necessitate long-context reasoning, orchestration of tools across legacy systems, and rigorous compliance processes—solving problems that currently lack definitive solutions.Our team has successfully deployed AI agents that manage real customer workflows effectively in production. As we expand our customer base and accelerate our growth, we are in search of highly skilled technical builders who aspire to make a significant impact in the early stages of our journey.As a foundational Machine Learning Engineer, you will own our entire ML stack and bring custom agents to life.

Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing every aspect of our lives. At Scale AI, we are dedicated to accelerating the advancement of AI applications across industries. For nearly a decade, we have established ourselves as a premier AI data foundry, powering groundbreaking innovations in AI, including generative AI, defense systems, and autonomous technologies. With our recent investment from Meta, we are committed to enhancing our state-of-the-art post-training algorithms to achieve unparalleled performance for complex agents serving enterprises globally. The Enterprise ML Research Lab is at the forefront of this AI evolution. Our team develops a suite of proprietary research, tools, and resources tailored for our enterprise clients. As a Machine Learning Research Engineer on the Data Foundation team, you will engage in pioneering research to optimize the data flywheel that drives our entire machine learning ecosystem. Your work will involve exploring synthetic environments, defining tasks, building agents for trace analysis, and contributing to a cutting-edge framework that automates agent building through advanced evaluation techniques. You will create top-tier agents that deliver state-of-the-art results by leveraging sophisticated post-training and agent-building algorithms. If you are passionate about influencing the future of Generative AI, we encourage you to apply!

Join a pioneering team of former Google engineers who have developed ground-breaking defensive technologies, such as Safe Browsing and reCAPTCHA. We are on a mission to confront an urgent challenge: combating the rising tide of adversarial AI attacks that threaten organizations globally.Operating in stealth mode, we are targeting a lucrative $5B+ market that is primed for innovation. Conventional detection methodologies are proving inadequate against the speed and sophistication of AI-driven assaults. Current adversaries are leveraging AI to engineer tailored, high-evasion attacks, leaving traditional systems vulnerable.Your Role:You will design a network of AI agents that are rapid, cost-effective, and precise, collaborating to identify and neutralize emerging threats. Your work will dive deep into real-time threat data, continuously evolving your agents in a fast-paced environment. These agents will function under an orchestration layer that fosters quick adaptation and learning.The Excitement of the ChallengeRapidly Evolving Models: The landscape changes daily; solutions that worked yesterday may be outdated today.Intelligent Adversaries: We are engaged in a real-time arms race against cunning, AI-enhanced attackers crafting sophisticated payloads.No Existing Playbook: We are forging new detection paradigms as swiftly as threats evolve. This high-stakes work places you in the heart of the action from day one.If you thrive on solving challenging problems with rapid feedback, this is your opportunity.Why We Are Positioned to SucceedExpansive Market: The market is vast at $5B and expanding quickly, while established players struggle to adapt.Proven Track Record: Our team has previously developed the foundational technology for Safe Browsing (serving over 5B users) and reCAPTCHA (protecting more than 5M websites) during our time at Google.Experienced Team: This is our third endeavor in creating a category-defining security enterprise, and we know how to scale our technology and our organization effectively.Deeply Integrated AI and Security: We embed AI from the outset rather than layering it on top.Top Talent: We hire only the highest achievers; many on our team were in the top 1% of engineers at Google. If you excelled in your previous role, you will fit right in.Agility: We prioritize speed and efficiency in everything we do.

Join Retell AI as a Senior Machine Learning EngineerRetell AI is at the forefront of revolutionizing the call center industry using groundbreaking voice AI technology. Within just 18 months of our inception, we have empowered thousands of businesses with our AI voice agents capable of managing sales, support, and logistics calls that traditionally required extensive human teams.Supported by renowned investors, including Y Combinator and Alt Capital, our journey has seen us scale from $5M to an impressive $36M ARR with a dedicated team of 20. Our ambition for 2026 is to develop a state-of-the-art customer experience platform, transforming entire contact centers with AI. We are building intelligent AI “workers” that will serve as frontline agents, quality assurance analysts, and managers—constantly executing, monitoring, and enhancing customer interactions.We are rapidly expanding and seeking passionate innovators eager to solve complex technical challenges and make a tangible impact in one of the fastest-growing voice AI startups. Together, let's shape the future of customer interactions.

Join Our Innovative Team at David AIDavid AI is pioneering the audio data research landscape. We adopt a rigorous R&D methodology for developing datasets that parallels the standards upheld by leading AI laboratories. Our vision is to seamlessly integrate AI into everyday experiences, with audio serving as the perfect conduit. The evolution of audio AI is rapidly unfolding, yet the availability of high-quality training data remains a critical challenge. This is where David AI steps in.Founded in 2024 by a talented group of former engineers and operators from Scale AI, we have quickly become a trusted partner to numerous FAANG companies and AI research labs. Recently, we secured $50 million in a Series B funding round with notable investors, including Meritech, NVIDIA, and Alt Capital.Our culture is built on sharp intellect, humility, ambition, and a close-knit community. We invite exceptional minds in research, engineering, product development, and operations to join us as we advance the field of audio AI.Research Team OverviewAt David AI, we are convinced that superior model capabilities stem from high-quality, differentiated data. Our research team is dedicated to conducting ambitious, long-term studies into audio technology while collaborating with both internal and external partners to implement cutting-edge research insights into practical applications.Your Role as a Founding Audio AI Research EngineerIn this position, you will establish the research framework that influences how premier AI labs develop their audio models. You will have access to a top-tier team of human AI trainers, robust computing resources, and the autonomy to shape your research agenda.Key ResponsibilitiesCreate and implement comprehensive evaluation frameworks for assessing audio AI capabilities in areas such as speech, emotion detection, conversational dynamics, and acoustic patterns.Investigate and prototype innovative methodologies for audio quality assessment, automated labeling, and optimizing data collection processes.Design focused data collection pipelines aimed at capturing novel, high-value audio capabilities.Develop automated systems for ongoing classifier enhancement and prompt engineering evaluation.Assess cutting-edge models and formulate actionable research strategies.Publish your findings in prestigious conferences.

About Liquid LabsAt Liquid AI, research has always been at the forefront of our mission. Liquid Labs serves as a dedicated internal research accelerator, facilitating groundbreaking advancements in the development of intelligent, personalized, and adaptive machines.Our roots extend back to MIT CSAIL, where pioneering work on Liquid Neural Networks established a new category of efficient sequence-processing architectures. This research laid the groundwork for our Liquid Foundation Models (LFMs), which are scalable, multimodal models designed for real-world applications in resource-constrained settings.In Liquid Labs, we continue this legacy by advancing the realm of efficient, adaptive intelligence through both fundamental research and practical engineering efforts.We collaborate closely with Liquid’s core foundation model and systems teams to turn theoretical concepts into deployable capabilities, setting the stage for a new era of powerful and efficient intelligent systems.About The Role:As a Research Engineer at Liquid Labs, you will be part of a dynamic, high-impact team pushing the boundaries of adaptive intelligence. You will be responsible for designing and implementing innovative architectures, training methodologies, and inference strategies to expand the potential of efficient AI.Your work will blend research and engineering, as you translate scientific concepts into functional systems, publish findings that advance the field, and deploy solutions that redefine what is achievable.While we prefer candidates from San Francisco and Boston, we welcome applications from other locations within the United States.

About the RoleJoin Thorin as an AI Researcher and play a pivotal role in shaping the core research initiatives that drive our AI innovations. In this position, you will operate at the crossroads of machine learning research, practical model development, and product application, enhancing our understanding and automation of enterprise workflows.This position merges theoretical research with hands-on implementation, transitioning ideas from conceptual stages through experimentation into functional components that enrich Thorin’s offerings.Your ResponsibilitiesResearch & InnovationConduct innovative machine learning research aligned with real-world product demands.Investigate new model architectures, training methods, and evaluation techniques specifically designed for understanding and automating organizational workflows.Model Development & EvaluationCreate, implement, and assess ML/AI methodologies that enhance model efficacy for essential tasks.Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to integrate research outcomes into tangible products that meet user needs.

Join Pinterest as a Senior Machine Learning Engineer specializing in Responsible AI. In this role, you will leverage your expertise to drive innovative applied research in machine learning, ensuring the responsible and ethical use of AI technologies. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to develop advanced algorithms and contribute to large-scale projects that impact millions of users around the globe.

Senior Software Engineer - ConnectivityThe Connectivity team at Scale owns the foundational platform that empowers us to consistently generate, assess, and deliver high-quality training data to our clients. Our systems are integral to Scale’s data and AI infrastructure, facilitating large-scale workflows while enabling cutting-edge AI functionalities such as multi-modality, long-horizon reasoning, and agentic behavior.We are seeking a seasoned engineer with extensive experience in developing robust platforms. The ideal candidate will possess strong architectural judgment, a commitment to correctness and reliability, and the capability to design systems that can scale and adapt effectively over time. This role is primarily backend-focused but includes full-stack responsibilities and substantial ownership from design to long-term operations.

Join the Future of AI at MercorAt Mercor, we find ourselves at the dynamic intersection of labor markets and artificial intelligence research. Our collaborations with top-tier AI laboratories and corporations empower us to deliver the crucial human intelligence that fuels AI advancement.Our expansive network of talent is akin to educators nurturing students; we impart knowledge, experience, and nuances that cannot simply be encoded. Currently, over 30,000 experts within our network generate upwards of $2 million daily.We are pioneering a novel category of employment where expertise drives the evolution of AI. To realize this vision, we require a driven, fast-paced, and exceptionally dedicated team. You will collaborate with researchers, operators, and cutting-edge AI firms that are shaping the future of societal systems.Mercor is a thriving Series C enterprise, currently valued at $10 billion. Our team operates in-person, five days a week, at our state-of-the-art headquarters in San Francisco.About the RoleLeading AI companies in Silicon Valley engage with Mercor to identify domain experts capable of training and assessing their models. As an AI Researcher at Mercor, you will be tasked with pushing the boundaries of model evaluation to enhance model performance across the industry, creating tangible economic value.You will regularly publish influential papers alongside industry leaders, have access to extensive resources for crafting impactful datasets, and engage with cutting-edge evaluation and training data. Collaborating closely with Mercor’s Forward Deployed Research, Applied AI, and Operations teams will provide you with unparalleled opportunities to assess leading models.We seek an accomplished AI researcher. A demonstrated history of publications in LLM evaluations is preferred, but we also value experience with other types of model evaluations or AI-related publications.Key ResponsibilitiesDevelop benchmarks that quantify the real-world impact of AI models.Publish LLM evaluation studies in top-tier conferences with the backing of Mercor’s Applied AI and Operations teams.Advance the understanding of data ROI in model development, encompassing multi-modality, coding, tool usage, and beyond.Design and validate innovative data collection and annotation solutions for leading industry labs and major tech firms.What We’re Looking ForA PhD or M.S. with 2+ years of professional experience in computer science, electrical engineering, econometrics, or a related STEM discipline that provides a robust foundation in machine learning and model evaluation.A strong publication record in AI research, particularly in model evaluation is essential.

Join our Frontier Tech Consultant team at Scale AI, where you will be instrumental in driving groundbreaking AI advancements. Your role will involve conducting impactful experiments and ensuring flawless execution that adheres to our high-quality standards. Your contributions will play a vital role in the growth and evolution of artificial intelligence. As an AI Strategy Consultant, you will engage in a diverse range of projects, including but not limited to: conducting research experiments, generating datasets, enhancing data quality, and performing comprehensive technical analyses. You will address intricate technical and operational challenges, collaborating closely with Scale’s ML research scientists and SPM team. The ideal candidate is analytical, detail-oriented, and results-focused, possessing strong problem-solving capabilities and exceptional communication skills. We seek individuals who excel in fast-paced environments, proactively tackle challenges, and are dedicated to delivering outstanding results. If you are passionate about being at the forefront of AI innovation, we encourage you to apply.

Join Databricks Mosaic AI as a Senior Machine Learning Engineer and take the lead in developing our cutting-edge generative AI platform. Our team, formed in late 2020, empowers businesses by allowing them to securely fine-tune, train, and deploy custom AI models using their own data. This ensures maximum security and control while being compatible with all major cloud providers, allowing for unparalleled flexibility in AI development.Since our integration into Databricks in July 2023, we have been dedicated to tackling some of the world's most challenging problems, from revolutionizing transportation to accelerating medical advancements. We leverage deep data insights to enhance our customers' business capabilities and thrive on overcoming technical challenges to deliver superior data and AI solutions.Role Overview:As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer, you will play a pivotal role in the design and implementation of our generative AI platform, covering the entire ML development lifecycle, including data generation, training, evaluation, serving, and agent-building. Your expertise will be essential in translating user requirements into intuitive product interfaces while constructing robust backend distributed systems that drive these features.

Join the Center for AI Safety (CAIS), a premier research and advocacy institution dedicated to minimizing large-scale societal risks associated with artificial intelligence. We tackle the most pressing challenges in AI through innovative technical research, community-building initiatives, and active policy engagement, alongside our sister organization, the Center for AI Safety Action Fund.As a Research Engineer, you will operate at the forefront of advanced machine learning research and dependable engineering practices. Your role will involve designing and executing experiments on large language models, developing the necessary tools for extensive model training and evaluation, and translating findings into publishable research. You will work collaboratively with CAIS researchers and external academic and commercial partners, utilizing our compute cluster to conduct large-scale training and evaluations. Your work will focus on critical areas such as AI honesty, robustness, transparency, and the identification of trojan/backdoor behaviors, all aimed at mitigating real-world risks posed by sophisticated AI systems.

Join Perplexity as an AI Research Tech Lead, where you'll spearhead our research initiatives and oversee the advancement of our proprietary Online LLMs, the Sonar models. In this pivotal leadership position, you will define the overarching research strategy across various modalities, mentor a talented team of researchers, and leverage our extensive query/answer dataset to enhance Sonar model performance, delivering a state-of-the-art Online LLM experience for our users.Key ResponsibilitiesResearch Leadership & StrategyEstablish and implement the overarching research strategy across diverse modalities, including post-training LLMs for agent trajectories and future mid-training projects.Lead the strategic planning and roadmap development to enhance Sonar model functionalities.Innovate in supervised and reinforcement learning techniques aimed at optimizing query answering.Collaborate with executive leadership to align research goals with product and business strategies.Team Development & MentorshipGuide and mentor a team of AI research scientists and engineers, nurturing their technical and professional development.Set the long-term research direction for the team, encompassing various modalities.Lead the recruitment and onboarding of new research talent.Foster a collaborative atmosphere that promotes knowledge sharing and innovative thinking.Technical ExcellencePost-train cutting-edge LLMs focused on query answering using advanced supervised and reinforcement learning techniques.Own and enhance the complete data, training, and evaluation pipelines necessary for LLM post-training.Deliver Sonar models that achieve top-notch query answering performance.Lead research efforts into agent trajectories and multi-modal capabilities.Steer the technical roadmap for future mid-training investments.Cross-Functional CollaborationCollaborate closely with engineering teams to integrate Sonar models into our products.Work with product teams to discern user needs and translate them into research priorities.Partner with data teams to effectively utilize our unique query/answer dataset.Communicate research progress and findings to stakeholders and broader teams.