Head of AI Research

COMPANY DESCRIPTION

FL105 is a privately held, early-stage company pioneering the use of artificial intelligence to transform mental health paradigms and pioneer a new category of psychological fitness. We are creating a world where individuals and communities are empowered to preemptively identify and tackle psychological challenges and address mental health concerns.

FL105 is backed by Flagship Pioneering, an innovation enterprise that conceives, creates, resources, and builds companies that invent breakthrough technologies to transform health care, agriculture, and sustainability. Flagship has created over 100 groundbreaking companies since 2000, including Moderna.

THE ROLE

We’re hiring a Head of Research to lead FL105’s scientific and machine learning strategy. You’ll own the full research arc – from foundational questions to deployment-level contributions – ensuring that our most ambitious hypotheses translate into real-world impact. This role is ideal for someone with a strong theoretical grounding and a builder’s mindset.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

In this role, you will:

• Lead R&D efforts across LLM-based agents, personality modeling, and simulations
• Develop and refine methods for dynamic emotional state modeling, and long-horizon agentic behavior
• Work closely with product and engineering teams to integrate research into product modules and user-facing experiments
• Oversee internal research roadmap and external collaborations
• Build and mentor a small team of ML scientists and research engineers
• Translate abstract psychological constructs into computational architectures, embeddings, or evaluable metrics

Successful candidates will be able to thrive in a fast-paced, action-oriented, team environment and display a clear passion for AI innovation and impact. The role offers a unique opportunity to help drive the strategy of an early-stage AI-focused company. The candidate must be an entrepreneurial, highly motivated, and purpose-driven individual. The successful candidate will have a track record of building consumer applications or large internal applications. S(he) must exhibit strong collaboration and communication skills. S(he) should be ready to lead application development in a very dynamic and innovative environment.  

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE & QUALIFICATIONS 

• PhD in Computer Science, Computational Neuroscience, Machine Learning, Cognitive Science, or similar quantitative discipline with 5+ years of industry experience.
• Deep understanding of LLMs, transformer architectures, and agentic behavior modeling
• Experience working with interactive systems, agent memory architectures, or simulation environments
• Strong track record of both hands-on research and technical leadership
• Fluent in experimental design, modeling, and ML pipeline development (e.g., PyTorch, JAX, etc.)
• Prior work in applied AI (e.g., product-facing ML, healthtech, behavior modeling) is a plus

ABOUT FLAGSHIP PIONEERING

Flagship Pioneering invents and builds platform companies, each with the potential for multiple products that transform human health, sustainability and beyond. Since its launch in 2000, Flagship has originated more than 100 companies. Many of these companies have addressed humanity’s most urgent challenges: vaccinating billions of people against COVID-19, curing intractable diseases, improving human health, preempting illness, and feeding the world by improving the resiliency and sustainability of agriculture.  

Flagship has been recognized twice on FORTUNE’s “Change the World” list, an annual ranking of companies that have made a positive social and environmental impact through activities that are part of their core business strategies and has been twice named to Fast Company’s annual list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies. Learn more about Flagship at www.flagshippioneering.com.

At Flagship, we accept impossible missions to enable bigger leaps. Our core values guide us through uncertainty and toward lasting impact.

We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

We recognize that great candidates often bring unique strengths without fulfilling every qualification. If you have some of the experience listed above but not all, please apply anyway. We are dedicated to building diverse and inclusive teams and look forward to learning more about your background and interest in Flagship.

Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Flagship Pioneering and its affiliated Flagship Lab companies (collectively, “FSP”) do not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of unsolicited resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to FSP or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Flagship Pioneering’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of FSP, and FSP will not owe any referral or other fees with respect thereto.

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