AI-Agent Network Scientist — HPC & Distributed Systems

California-Institute-of-Technology; Pasadena (CA); On-site; USD 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Caltech is seeking a Research Scientist focused on AI-enabled networks for data-intensive science, collaborating with Oak Ridge National Lab on the SciNet project and Genesis Mission.

The role spans AI-agent architectures, HPC networking, and experimental testbeds, with prototypes in Python and ML frameworks. Collaboration across university, national lab, and industry partners is expected.

Qualifications

• PhD in CS/EE/Data Science/AI or related field.
• Strong programming skills, preferably in Python.
• Understanding of computer networking and distributed systems.
• Familiarity with machine learning or artificial intelligence.
• Ability to conduct experiments, analyze data, and communicate technical results.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently and as part of a multidisciplinary research team.

Responsibilities

• Investigate architectures for AI agents operating in networked systems.
• Develop and evaluate LLM-based and/or reinforcement-learning-based network agents.
• Explore multi-agent approaches for network monitoring, optimization, troubleshooting, and orchestration.
• Investigate agent planning, reasoning, tool use, memory, and coordination for network operations.
• Develop methods for safe and reliable autonomous network decision-making.
• Analyze network telemetry, traffic patterns, performance metrics, and system events.
• Study network optimization problems including routing, congestion control, traffic engineering, and resource allocation.
• Investigate interactions between compute, storage, and network resources in HPC environments.
• Evaluate AI-agent approaches using HPC and scientific networking workloads.
• Develop experimental environments using network simulators, emulators, digital twins, and/or HPC testbeds.
• Implement prototype AI-agent systems and integrate them with networking tools.
• Conduct controlled experiments to compare AI-agent approaches against conventional network-management techniques.
• Collect, analyze, and visualize experimental results.
• Develop research prototypes primarily in Python and, where appropriate, C/C++ or other systems languages.
• Work with machine-learning frameworks and APIs.
• Develop interfaces between AI agents and network monitoring/control systems.
• Build reproducible experiment pipelines and research software.
• Use Git/GitHub or equivalent version-control systems and follow good software-engineering practices.
• Contribute to conference and workshop submissions.
• Present research results to interdisciplinary audiences.
• Participate in research meetings with university, national laboratory, and industry collaborators.

Skills

Python

Distributed systems

Networking

AI/ML

Education

PhD in Computer Science/EE/Data Science/AI

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Kubernetes

Git/GitHub

Job description

Caltech is seeking a Research Scientist focused on AI-enabled networks for data-intensive science, collaborating with Oak Ridge National Lab on the SciNet project and Genesis Mission.

The role spans AI-agent architectures, HPC networking, and experimental testbeds, with prototypes in Python and ML frameworks. Collaboration across university, national lab, and industry partners is expected.