Founding Researcher

Wintermeyer Ventures; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 185,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Wintermeyer Ventures in San Francisco, CA, seeks an early‑stage AI safety researcher to lead projects from initial design through publication, collaborating with legal experts and academic advisers.

You will design experiments to evaluate and control AI agents for legal compliance, build evaluation environments and training pipelines, develop realistic court‑based scenarios, and publish benchmarks and tools to advance the field.

Qualifications

• Two to eight years of AI research, ML engineering, or related work.
• Degree in computer science, machine learning, or a related field, or equivalent research experience.
• Experience with LLM or agent evaluations, training environments, post-training pipelines, or AI safety and alignment.
• Hands-on experience building evaluation harnesses, reinforcement learning environments, or training pipelines.
• Strong Python skills and fluency with the modern ML stack, including production engineering experience.
• A builder-first approach, with experience writing code and shipping research or engineering work.
• Authorization to work in the United States without current or future visa sponsorship.

Responsibilities

• Design and run experiments to evaluate, train, and control AI agents for legal compliance.
• Build evaluation environments, training pipelines, and runtime harnesses for agent research.
• Develop realistic simulated scenarios from court decisions and legal rules.
• Investigate how agents handle conflicting obligations, overlapping jurisdictions, and legal standards that require judgment.
• Work with legal experts to ground research in practice, then publish findings and release benchmarks and tools.

Skills

Python

AI research

ML engineering

Production engineering

Shipping research

Education

BS in Computer Science

Equivalent research experience

Tools

LLM evaluation tools

RL environments

Training pipelines

Job description

About the Role

Join an early-stage AI safety research team working to develop AI systems that follow laws and legal standards. You will lead research projects from initial design through publication, building on collaboration with legal experts and academic advisors.

What You'll Do

• Design and run experiments to evaluate, train, and control AI agents for legal compliance.
• Build evaluation environments, training pipelines, and runtime harnesses for agent research.
• Develop realistic simulated scenarios from court decisions and legal rules.
• Investigate how agents handle conflicting obligations, overlapping jurisdictions, and legal standards that require judgment.
• Work with legal experts to ground research in practice, then publish findings and release benchmarks and tools.

What We're Looking For

• Two to eight years of experience advancing AI through research, ML engineering, or related work.
• A degree in computer science, machine learning, or a related field, or equivalent research experience.
• Experience with LLM or agent evaluations, training environments, post-training pipelines, or AI safety and alignment.
• Hands-on experience building evaluation harnesses, reinforcement learning environments, or training pipelines.
• Strong Python skills and fluency with the modern ML stack, including production engineering experience.
• A builder-first approach, with experience writing code and shipping research or engineering work.
• Authorization to work in the United States without current or future visa sponsorship.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary is $185,000 to $210,000 annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.

Location

This is an on-site role in San Francisco, California.