Founding RL Engineer

Clera Labs, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 125,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Clera Labs, Inc. is seeking a Founding Reinforcement Learning Engineer in San Francisco for an on-site, full-time role. You will build core RL systems from the ground up, collaborating directly with the founders to design environments, training loops, and evaluation frameworks.

You will ship fast in a small, early-stage team, scale GPU training, and help set engineering culture while turning research ideas into production. Compensation ranges from $125,000 to $200,000 USD.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of hands-on experience in reinforcement learning or ML engineering.
• Strong Python skills and deep experience with PyTorch.
• Hands-on experience training models with RL (policy gradient methods, RLHF or similar).
• Experience with LLM post-training or agent training is a big plus.
• Comfortable with distributed training and GPU infrastructure.
• Builder mindset: you ship fast and are in a small, early-stage team.
• Degree in CS, Math, Physics or a related field (MS / PhD a plus).

Responsibilities

• Design and build RL environments, reward functions and training pipelines.
• Train and fine-tune models with RL methods (PPO, GRPO, DPO, RLHF / RLAIF and similar).
• Build evaluation frameworks to measure model and agent performance.
• Run experiments fast, read results, and decide what to try next.
• Scale training on GPU clusters and keep pipelines reliable.
• Turn research ideas into production systems.
• Help set engineering culture and hire the next engineers.

Skills

Reinforcement learning

Python

PyTorch

RL training

Distributed training

GPU infrastructure

ML engineering

Education

CS/Math/Physics

MS/PhD a plus

Tools

Gymnasium

Ray RLlib

MuJoCo

Isaac

TRL/OpenRLHF

Job description

Founding RL Engineer (San Francisco, on-site, full-time)

About the role

We are looking for a Founding Reinforcement Learning Engineer to build the core RL systems from the ground up. You will work directly with the founders, own the full loop from environment design to training to evaluation, and help shape the technical direction of the company.

What you will do

• Design and build RL environments, reward functions and training pipelines
• Train and fine-tune models with RL methods (PPO, GRPO, DPO, RLHF / RLAIF and similar)
• Build evaluation frameworks to measure model and agent performance
• Run experiments fast, read results, and decide what to try next
• Scale training on GPU clusters and keep pipelines reliable
• Turn research ideas into production systems
• Help set engineering culture and hire the next engineers

What we are looking for

• 2+ years of hands-on experience in reinforcement learning or ML engineering
• Strong Python skills and deep experience with PyTorch (or JAX)
• Hands-on work training models with RL (policy gradient methods, reward modeling, RLHF or similar)
• Experience with LLM post-training or agent training is a big plus
• Comfortable with distributed training and GPU infrastructure
• Builder mindset: you ship fast and are happy in a small, early-stage team
• Degree in CS, Math, Physics or a related field (MS / PhD a plus)

Nice to have

• Publications or open-source work in RL
• Experience at an AI lab or an early-stage AI startup
• Experience with simulation or environment frameworks (Gymnasium, Ray RLlib, Isaac, MuJoCo)
• Experience with training libraries like TRL, verl or OpenRLHF

Details

Location: San Francisco, CA (on-site)
Employment type: Full-time
Compensation: $125,000 - $200,000 USD