Research Engineer / Scientist - Reinforcement Learning

Posted Yesterday
Be an Early Applicant
Hiring Remotely in San Francisco, CA, USA
In-Office or Remote
150K-350K Annually
Entry level
Artificial Intelligence • Software
The Role
Research Engineer or Scientist developing reinforcement learning algorithms and systems for frontier AI models. Responsibilities include researching policy optimization, asynchronous RL stability, scaling behavior, controlled experiments, evaluations, training recipes, and distributed RL frameworks. The role also involves extending prime-rl, improving numerical correctness and performance, and diagnosing unstable training runs and regressions.
Summary Generated by Built In
Own Your Intelligence
 

Prime Intellect is building the open superintelligence stack: the infrastructure frontier AI labs build internally, made available to every ambitious AI team.

 

Our platform, Lab, unifies compute, environments, evaluations, secure sandboxes, high-performance training, and deployment into one full-stack system for post-training at frontier scale - from SFT and RL to tool use, agent workflows, and continuously improving production models. We are building open frontier AI: open-source models trained end to end for long-horizon tasks like autonomous research, and the full-stack platform our own research team uses to build them. The next generation of AI companies, enterprises, and research teams do not just need more GPUs. They need the ability to turn their own workflows, tools, data, and feedback loops into superintelligence they own.

 

Prime Intellect has raised $150M in total funding from Founders Fund, Radical Ventures, NVIDIA, and exceptional AI, infrastructure, and enterprise operators — including Andrej Karpathy, Dwarkesh Patel, and leaders and founders from Ramp, Perplexity, Harvey, Mercor, Zapier, Datadog, Cognition, OpenAI, Thinking Machines, Together AI, SemiAnalysis, LangChain, Browserbase, Cloudflare, Sierra, Databricks, Airbnb, OpenRouter, Standard Intelligence, Fleet, Core Auto, and more. We are looking for people who want to build at the intersection of frontier research, real infrastructure, and go-to-market for a category that does not fully exist yet.

 
Role Impact

Help develop the algorithms and systems used to train Prime Intellect’s open models with reinforcement learning. We’re hiring research engineers and scientists across RL algorithms, scaling research, and training frameworks. Your focus will reflect your strengths; you don’t need to cover all three.

Responsibilities

Algorithm research

  • Develop and test RL methods for reasoning, coding, and long-horizon tasks, including changes to training objectives and policy optimization.

  • Investigate stability in asynchronous RL, including policy staleness, trainer/sampler mismatch, and numerical differences between training and rollouts.

  • Work with data and evaluation researchers to understand how task selection, rewards, and training data affect what the model learns.

Scaling science

  • Design experiments to understand how RL performance and learning dynamics change with model size, training compute, and task horizon.

  • Use controlled ablations and evaluations to distinguish learning gains from reward exploitation, evaluation artifacts, or training bugs.

  • Turn experimental findings into training recipes, then test whether the improvements hold across larger models and longer runs.

RL frameworks

  • Extend prime-rl to support new algorithms, models, and asynchronous training workflows.

  • Improve the performance and numerical correctness of research runs across trainers, rollout workers, and environments, working with the infrastructure team.

  • Build diagnostics that make unstable runs and performance regressions easier to reproduce, and help distinguish algorithm problems from implementation or runtime issues.

Requirements
  • Demonstrated depth in at least one of RL algorithms, empirical research on model training, or distributed ML systems. This could come through research, open-source contributions, or systems you’ve built.

  • Strong programming skills in Python and experience with PyTorch or a comparable ML framework.

  • Ability to design controlled experiments, interpret results, and debug unexpected model or system behavior.

  • Experience taking a research idea or systems change through implementation, testing, and evaluation, with a clear account of what worked and what didn’t.

Nice to have

  • Experience with distributed training frameworks or asynchronous rollout pipelines.

  • Experience diagnosing unstable RL runs, including policy-staleness or numerical issues.

  • Work on coding agents, verifiable rewards, or long-horizon environments.

Benefits and Perks
  • Cash Compensation Range of $150-350k, including equity incentives, aligning your success with the growth and impact of Prime Intellect.

  • Flexible work arrangements, with the option to work remotely or in-person at our offices in San Francisco.

  • Visa sponsorship and relocation assistance for international candidates.

  • Quarterly team off-sites, hackathons, conferences and learning opportunities.

  • Opportunity to work with a talented, hard-working and mission-driven team, united by a shared passion for leveraging technology to accelerate science and AI.

If you're excited about the opportunity to build the foundation for the future of decentralized AI and create a platform that empowers developers and researchers to push the boundaries of what's possible, we'd love to hear from you.

Skills Required

  • Demonstrated depth in reinforcement learning algorithms, empirical research on model training, or distributed machine learning systems
  • Strong programming skills in Python
  • Experience with PyTorch or a comparable machine learning framework
  • Ability to design controlled experiments, interpret results, and debug unexpected model or system behavior
  • Experience taking a research idea or systems change through implementation, testing, and evaluation
  • Experience with distributed training frameworks or asynchronous rollout pipelines
  • Experience diagnosing unstable reinforcement learning runs, including policy staleness or numerical issues
  • Experience working on coding agents, verifiable rewards, or long-horizon environments
Am I A Good Fit?
beta
Get Personalized Job Insights.
Our AI-powered fit analysis compares your resume with a job listing so you know if your skills & experience align.

The Company
HQ: San Francisco, CA
16 Employees

What We Do

Prime Intellect democratizes AI development at scale. Our platform makes it easy to find global compute resources and train state-of-the-art models through distributed training across clusters. Collectively own the resulting open AI innovations, from language models to scientific breakthroughs.

Similar Jobs

Luma AI Logo Luma AI

Scientist

Artificial Intelligence • Software
Remote or Hybrid
10 Locations
246 Employees
188K-395K Annually

Square Logo Square

Marketing Manager

eCommerce • Fintech • Hardware • Payments • Software • Financial Services
Remote or Hybrid
8 Locations
12000 Employees
136K-245K Annually

Wipfli Logo Wipfli

Senior Consultant

Cloud • Fintech • Software • Business Intelligence • Consulting • Financial Services
Remote or Hybrid
United States
2900 Employees
88K-118K Annually

CrowdStrike Logo CrowdStrike

Senior Software Engineer

Cloud • Computer Vision • Information Technology • Sales • Security • Cybersecurity
Remote or Hybrid
USA
11000 Employees
125K-180K Annually

Similar Companies Hiring

Revel Thumbnail
Aerospace • Hardware • Robotics • Software
Marina Del Rey, California
70 Employees
Blee Thumbnail
Artificial Intelligence • Marketing Tech • Software
New York, New York
30 Employees
Vega Thumbnail
Artificial Intelligence • Automotive • Insurance • Transportation
US
65 Employees

Sign up now Access later

Create Free Account

Please log in or sign up to report this job.

Create Free Account