Efficient Models Research Scientist

HushOne, Inc.; Kirkland (WA); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

401(k) with company match

Health, dental and vision

Gym membership

Remote-friendly

Job summary

HushOne, Inc. is seeking a research-focused engineer to push compression, distillation, sparsity, and architecture for efficient AI on real hardware. You will collaborate with inference and hardware teams to test whether theoretical savings translate into user-visible improvements.

You should have a doctorate or equivalent and publish reproducible results with clear negative outcomes. In 90 days, reproduce a baseline and deliver a tested hypothesis with quality, latency, memory and energy

Qualifications

• PhD or equivalent research evidence required.
• Publish reproducible code along with results.
• Prioritize honest evaluation and negative results.

Responsibilities

• Research compression, distillation, sparsity, architecture or adaptive computation.
• Collaborate with inference and hardware engineers to test practical savings.
• Reproduce a baseline and deliver a tested hypothesis within 90 days.

Skills

Mathematics

Experimental methods

Reproducible code

Honest evaluation

Open-ended experimentation

Education

Doctorate or equivalent

Tools

Python

Research tooling

Job description

You explore how much useful intelligence fits into an affordable personal computer, and you pursue only the improvements that survive honest evaluation. Clear negative results are a real contribution here, because they stop the rest of the company spending a quarter on something that will not work.

The work:

Research compression, distillation, sparsity, architecture or adaptive computation. Compare against strong baselines on both model capability and actual device behavior. Work with inference and hardware engineers to test whether theoretical savings become user-visible improvements.

What good looks like:

In your first 90 days, reproduce a baseline and deliver one tested hypothesis with quality, latency, memory and energy results.

Evidence we look for:

Bring strong mathematical and experimental foundations, with a doctorate or equivalent research evidence. Clear negative results and reproducible code are valuable contributions.

Required:

• Strong mathematical and experimental foundations, with a doctorate or equivalent research evidence
• Reproducible code published alongside your results, not on request
• You report negative results clearly rather than reframing them
• You evaluate against something honest rather than against a favourable baseline

Nice to have:

• Model compression, distillation, or sparsity specifically
• Architecture search or efficient architectures
• Open-weights contributions

The exercise:

Explain an efficiency result that failed after deployment and propose an experiment to identify the hidden cost.

How we work:

We work together in the office, five days a week, and you can be based at any of our garages: Kirkland Garage (Kirkland, WA); UAE Garage (Dubai, Dubai). We hire across the United States, India and the UAE. We are remote-friendly around family: if you need to work from home some days to look after the people you love, we arrange that with you one person at a time, and we encourage people to use it rather than tough it out.

Pay:

We publish what we pay. Indicative ranges by market and level are on our compensation page, and they are realistic going market rates rather than headline numbers. Wherever we hire we pay at least the local market rate, and for full-time roles our floor is a living wage, never the statutory minimum. Compensation is reviewed every year and on promotion.

Equity:

Every full-time teammate gets stock options. Four-year vesting with a one-year cliff, sized to role, level and impact, and confirmed in writing at offer. High performers earn refresh grants.

Bonus and commission:

An annual performance bonus tied to clear company and personal goals, indicatively 10 to 20 percent of base for non-sales roles. Customer-facing roles carry on-target earnings, typically a 50/50 split of base and variable, with uncapped commission and accelerators above quota.

Health and peace of mind:

Medical, dental and vision for you and your family, plus life and disability cover. We have chosen the highest plan tier available to us rather than the cheapest one that clears the bar, because the point of this is that you never have to think about it. The specific plan numbers are confirmed in your offer letter.

401(k) with company matching:

A 401(k) with a company match, so the years you spend here compound into something that is yours whatever happens next. The match formula is confirmed in your offer letter.

AI tokens:

A budget of AI tokens of your own, because a company that says you should own your AI cannot be the company that rations it. Use them on the work and on whatever you are curious about.

Gym, and the everyday things:

A gym membership, and a corporate benefits programme with its own app, where you redeem real discounts with a long list of retailers on the ordinary purchases of a life.

Family:

We are remote-friendly around your family, arranged one person at a time, and we would rather you took it than toughed it out.

Referrals:

Refer someone we hire full-time who stays a year and you get $1,000 plus $10,000 in referral stock-based equity, on top of your own package.