MTS: Behavioral Research Scientist

Seldon; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 145,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

28 days PTO

Tower Bridge office

2 days WFH per week

Team dinners and offsites

SF travel opportunities

Job summary

Seldon is seeking a highly skilled researcher to join their Research team in London. You’ll build psychologically grounded models of user behavior and deploy them in live interfaces, shaping agent actions and outcomes.

You’ll work with engineers to productionize your models and run human studies to validate results. Ideal candidates hold an MSc/PhD or postdoc in related fields and have experience with decision-making research, RL or agent-based modeling.

Qualifications

• Candidates should have advanced research in decision-making, learning, or behavioral modeling.
• Experience leading human studies is beneficial.
• Comfort interpreting data and collaborating with engineers in fast-moving environments.

Responsibilities

• Model human differences and build computationally useful models.
• Infer users' internal states from behavior and link to persona.
• Shape behavior in live interfaces and study attention and engagement.
• Measure fidelity by comparing agent behavior to human data and benchmarks.
• Understand user interpretations of interfaces and attention patterns.
• Experiment with synthetic populations to test responses before launch.

Skills

Personality & motivation reasoning

Prototype in ML/LLM sandbox

Collaboration with engineers

Research leadership in digital context

Agent-based modeling / RL experience

UX/experimental tools collaboration

Education

MSc, PhD or postdoc in Cognitive Science/Behavioral Economics/Psychology/HCI

Tools

ML sandbox

Job description

Type: Full Time, Hybrid

Team: Research

Focus: Applied Research

Who We Are

We're a team of founders, engineers, researchers, creatives, and operators building what we believe will be one of the defining companies of the AI era.

Some of us came from startups. Some from academia. Some from hospitality, defense, design, or completely different worlds. We don't care how you got here - we care about your energy, intelligence, curiosity, resilience, and ambition.

Who We Are Not

• We are not remote. We value the spontaneous moments that happen when we’re together - over dinner, in the hallway, around whiteboards. We like being around each other because the best conversations here rarely happen in meetings.

• We are not your typical team. It's not just the 10 countries we’re from, the languages we speak or our non-traditional backgrounds. We’re solving hard problems with people we respect - we make the most of our time together, we make it special.

• We are not another “polished” SF startup. We value velocity over speed, raw talent over brands, and genuine human connection above all else. We value being successful, not looking successful.
  

What You’ll Own & Build

• Model human differences. Turn motivation, goals, personality, identity, experience and technical fluency into psychologically grounded, computationally useful models that guide agents and generalise across users.

• Infer users’ internal states. Use clickstreams, navigation paths and dwell time to model intent, confusion, patience, confidence and engagement, linking these states to each agent’s persona.

• Shape behaviour in live interfaces. Model how traits, goals, experience and changing states such as frustration or uncertainty influence agents’ attention, choices and actions during computer use.

• Measure human fidelity. Compare agent behaviour with human data, build benchmarks and quantify uncertainty to identify where simulations succeed or fail across user types.

• Understand how users interpret interfaces. Study attention, expectations and mental models: what users notice first, what they overlook, and where interfaces conflict with their expectations.

• Experiment with synthetic populations. Test how different users respond to interface and flow changes, analysing trajectories for patterns, failure modes and edge cases before launch.

Who You Are

• You have a MSc, PhD or postdoc in Cognitive Science, Behavioral Economics, Psychology, Human-Computer Interaction, or a related field

• You can reason about personality and motivation, then implement the model yourself into a prototype in a modern ML and LLM sandbox, and work with engineers to get it into production

• You've led original research on decision-making, learning, or behavioral modeling, especially in digital contexts. Bonus for designing and running human studies.

• Are passionate about applying your research to real-world systems without sacrificing depth or rigor.

• Are comfortable interpreting data, collaborating with engineers, and working in a fast-moving environment.

• Bonus

  • Experience with agent-based modeling, RL, or AI safety/alignment

  • You've worked with product teams, experimentation tools, or UX researchers
    
    

Why Seldon

• The Timing: The entire product stack was designed for a world where building software was expensive. That world is gone. The next generation of companies will be built around understanding human behavior before anything goes live.

• The Team: A deeply ambitious, unusually diverse group of researchers, engineers, founders, and operators who care about building something meaningful together.

• The Problem: Deep science with real impact. We leverage behavioral modeling, cognitive science, and cutting-edge AI to solve real product challenges for real customers.

• The Traction: Real interest from some of the most sophisticated companies and organizations in product, research, finance, and government.

• The Backing: Backed by MaC VC, Protagonist, Weekend Fund and scouts at a16z, along with a team of MIT researchers and leaders from Discord, Airbnb, Meta, and Google.

• The Member Of Staff Philosophy: You don't care about titles - you value extreme ownership.

Comp & Benefits

• Salary: £110-145k base + equity

• PTO: 28 days (inc 8 bank holidays)

• Environment: Beautiful office in Tower Bridge optimized for deep collaboration

• WFH: 2 days/week (Mon & Fri) to catch up on laundry, save time commuting, and let your cat walk across the keyboard

• Adventures: Team dinners, offsites, and events throughout the year, including opportunities to travel to SF