AI Research Engineer (Agentic Post-training) - 100% Remote Worldwide

Tether; United States; Remote; USD 140,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Tether is seeking an experienced AI/ML researcher to drive post-training for agentic workflows and tool-use across multi-modal systems. You will refine pre-trained models to reason, plan, and autonomously invoke tools for real-world tasks on edge devices, from smartphones to compact hardware.

You will contribute to scalable post-training pipelines, evaluate model readiness, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to deploy production-ready solutions.

Qualifications

• Degree in CS/ML or related field; MS/PhD preferred.
• Experience with multimodal post-training workflows and data pipelines.
• Hands-on experience with distributed training at scale (multi-node GPUs).
• Open-source contributions to agentic systems or tool use.

Responsibilities

• Conduct end-to-end research and engineering initiatives to advance post-training of agentic and tool-use models.
• Drive cross-cutting model improvements: factuality, instruction adherence, tool use, multi-agent coordination.
• Design and enhance large-scale post-training systems and pipelines.
• Develop rigorous evaluation suites and diagnostic tools for deployment readiness.
• Strengthen feedback loops from real-world product usage.
• Collaborate with tooling, product, and training teams to improve usefulness and reliability of frontier models.
• Liaise with teams to determine production-ready integrations for major model releases.

Skills

Post-training agentic workflows

Tool use

Multimodal data pipelines

Education

Degree in Computer Science or Machine Learning

MS/PhD preferred

Tools

Distributed training frameworks

Job description

Join Tether and Shape the Future of Digital Finance

At Tether, we're not just building products, we're pioneering a global financial revolution. Our cutting-edge solutions empower businesses—from exchanges and wallets to payment processors and ATMs—to seamlessly integrate reserve-backed tokens across blockchains. By harnessing the power of blockchain technology, Tether enables you to store, send, and receive digital tokens instantly, securely, and globally, all at a fraction of the cost. Transparency is the bedrock of everything we do, ensuring trust in every transaction.

Innovate with Tether

Tether Finance: Our innovative product suite features the worlds most trusted stablecoin, USDT, relied upon by hundreds of millions worldwide, alongside pioneering digital asset tokenization services.

But that's just the beginning:

Tether Power: Driving sustainable growth, our energy solutions optimize excess power for Bitcoin mining using eco-friendly practices in state-of-the-art, geo-diverse facilities.

Tether Data: Fueling breakthroughs in AI and peer-to-peer technology, we reduce infrastructure costs and enhance global communications with cutting-edge solutions like KEET, our flagship app that redefines secure and private data sharing.

Tether Education: Democratizing access to top-tier digital learning, we empower individuals to thrive in the digital and gig economies, driving global growth and opportunity.

Tether Evolution: At the intersection of technology and human potential, we are pushing the boundaries of what is possible, crafting a future where innovation and human capabilities merge in powerful, unprecedented ways.

Why Join Us?

Our team is a global talent powerhouse, working remotely from every corner of the world. If you're passionate about making a mark in the fintech space, this is your opportunity to collaborate with some of the brightest minds, pushing boundaries and setting new standards. We've grown fast, stayed lean, and secured our place as a leader in the industry.

If you have excellent English communication skills and are ready to contribute to the most innovative platform on the planet, Tether is the place for you.

Are you ready to be part of the future?

About the job

As a member of the AI model team, you will drive innovation in post-training methodologies, with a special focus on agentic behaviors and tool use. Your work will refine pre-trained models so that they not only deliver enhanced intelligence and domain specific capabilities, but also learn to reason, plan, and autonomously invoke external tools to solve real world, multi step tasks and applications on edge devices (i.e., smartphones).

You will work on a wide spectrum of systems, ranging from streamlined, resource efficient agents that run on limited hardware to complex multi modal architectures integrating text, images, and audio, all optimized for tool augmented decision making.

We expect you to have deep expertise in large language model architectures and substantial experience in post-training for agentic workflows, including tool use fine tuning, function calling, and reinforcement learning from feedback on multi turn interactions. You will adopt a hands-on, research driven approach to developing, testing, and implementing new post-training algorithms that unlock goal directed behavior, self correction, and reliable tool invocation.

Your responsibilities include curating agentic training data (e.g., trajectories of tool use, reasoning chains, environment interactions), strengthening baseline performance, and identifying as well as resolving bottlenecks in post-training for tool augmented agents to achieve SOTA model quality. The goal is to build models that do not just know but also act, use tools, and adapt, pushing the limits of what agentic AI can achieve.

Responsibilities

• Conduct end-to-end research and engineering initiatives to advance post-training of agentic and tool-use models to achieve SOTA results.

• Drive broad, cross-cutting model improvements, including factuality, instruction adherence, tool/function use, multi-agent coordination, and reasoning calibration.

• Design and enhance large-scale post-training systems, including data pipelines, training workflows, evaluation frameworks, and benchmark infrastructure.

• Develop rigorous evaluation suites and diagnostic tools to assess model readiness for deployment.

• Strengthen feedback loops from real-world product usage, incorporating both explicit and implicit user signals into post-training.

• Collaborate with tooling, product, and training teams to improve the usefulness, reliability, and agentic capabilities of frontier models.

• Closely liaise with research, engineering and cross-functional teams to determine which integrations are production-ready for inclusion in major model releases.

• Degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field; advanced degree (MS/PhD) preferred with a strong publication record in top-tier AI conferences.
• Experience with multimodal post-training workflows and data pipelines, particularly for agentic systems and tool use.
• Hands-on experience applying post-training at scale using distributed training frameworks (e.g., multi-node GPU environments).
• Demonstrated experience improving model capabilities in areas such as reasoning, tool use, and multi-agent coordination that achieve SOTA results.
• Proven track record of open-source contributions related to agentic systems or tool use (code, datasets, or models) on platforms such as GitHub or Hugging Face.
• Publications at leading AI conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, CVPR, ECCV).