AI Research Scientist, New Grad – Agents & Reinforcement Learning

Snowflake; Bellevue (WA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Snowflake is seeking an AI Research Scientist (New Grad) to join its AI Research team in Bellevue, Washington. The ideal candidate will develop autonomous AI systems, leverage their expertise in reinforcement learning, and contribute to agentic frameworks.

This role offers a unique opportunity to work on real-world applications and impact how enterprises utilize intelligent automation. Candidates should have a PhD or equivalent research experience.

Qualifications

• Foundational expertise in reinforcement learning algorithms, including RLHF, DPO, PPO.
• Research experience in LLM post‑training, fine‑tuning, or reasoning model development.
• Demonstrated ability to implement and experiment with agentic architectures.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop agentic frameworks powered by recursive self‑improvement loops.
• Build and evaluate autonomous research agents capable of formulating hypotheses.
• Develop coding agents that understand, generate, and debug code across tasks.

Skills

Reinforcement learning algorithms

Python

Deep learning frameworks

Mathematical analysis

Agentic architectures

Education

PhD in Computer Science or related field

Tools

PyTorch

JAX

Job description

We are hiring an AI Research Scientist (New Grad) for our AI Research team. Our team is pushing the frontier of autonomous, self‑improving AI systems — building agents that reason, code, and learn at scale inside the Snowflake Data Cloud. This role sits at the intersection of agentic AI and reinforcement learning, where your research will directly shape how enterprises leverage intelligent automation.

AS AN AI RESEARCH SCIENTIST AT SNOWFLAKE, YOU WILL:

• Design and develop agentic frameworks powered by recursive self‑improvement loops, enabling AI systems that iteratively refine their own capabilities and strategies
• Build and evaluate autonomous research agents — systems capable of autonomously formulating hypotheses, executing experiments, and synthesizing findings
• Develop coding agents that understand, generate, and debug code across complex, multi‑step programming tasks
• Conduct research in reinforcement learning with a focus on RLHF, DPO, and PPO as mechanisms for aligning and improving agentic behaviors
• Contribute to multi‑agent systems where specialized agents collaborate, negotiate, and self‑organize to solve enterprise‑scale problems
• Develop and curate training data pipelines — both synthetic and human‑annotated — to support novel agentic and RL research domains
• Publish research findings at top‑tier venues such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, and ACL

OUR IDEAL AI RESEARCH SCIENTIST WILL HAVE:

• PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or a closely related field (completing or recently completed; or equivalent research experience)
• Foundational expertise in reinforcement learning algorithms, including RLHF, DPO, PPO, or multi‑agent systems
• Research experience in LLM post‑training, fine‑tuning, or reasoning model development
• Demonstrated ability to implement and experiment with agentic architectures — including tool‑use, planning, and self‑correction loops
• Proficiency in Python and at least one deep learning framework (PyTorch or JAX strongly preferred)
• Strong mathematical and analytical foundation — comfortable working at the intersection of theory and empirical research
• At least one first‑author or co‑authored publication or preprint in a relevant AI/ML area

BONUS POINTS FOR THE FOLLOWING:

• Hands‑on experience building or evaluating coding agents or autonomous research agents
• Familiarity with recursive self‑improvement frameworks or automated AI scientist paradigms
• Experience with large‑scale distributed training or efficient training paradigms
• Background in mathematical reasoning, structured decision‑making, or program synthesis
• Exposure to domain‑specific AI applications in healthcare, finance, or enterprise workflows

Snowflake’s AI Research team operates at the frontier of what autonomous AI systems can do — not as a research lab disconnected from practice, but as a team where your work ships into a platform used by thousands of enterprises. You’ll be working alongside researchers and engineers building the next generation of agentic infrastructure, with access to large‑scale compute, real‑world data challenges, and the shortest possible path from research idea to product impact.

For a new grad role, this is a rare opportunity to grow your research career while contributing to systems that actually run in production — shaping how AI agents reason, learn, and improve themselves inside the world’s leading data cloud.

For jobs located in the United States, please visit the job posting on the Snowflake Careers Site for salary and benefits information: careers.snowflake.com