Head of Research

Ghost AI; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 300,000 - 600,000; Full time

Job summary

Ghost AI is seeking a hands-on Head of Research to own the roadmap and guide frontier AI initiatives from discovery to deployment. You will lead a growing team of researchers, tackle post-training challenges, and collaborate with top labs to push the boundaries of RL and model training.

You will stay hands-on with experiments, bridge research and engineering, and shape the company's technical direction as it scales its deterministic RL environments and datasets.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience as a research scientist or applied researcher.
• Proven leadership experience at a frontier AI lab, leading AI research lab or AI data company.
• Deep, hands-on expertise in reinforcement learning, model training and post-training.
• A track record of impactful research — a notable publication or model that has performed strongly on a recognised benchmark.
• Experience setting research direction, leading projects and delivering measurable results.

Responsibilities

• Own the research roadmap and drive the strategy for frontier AI initiatives.
• Tackle challenging post-training problems with leading AI research teams.
• Build an applied research function from the ground up and scale the team.
• Bridge research and engineering to turn breakthroughs into production-ready deliverables.

Skills

Reinforcement Learning

Model Training

Post-training

Research Leadership

Experimentation

Education

PhD in RL-related field

Tools

GRPO

Qwen 2.5

Job description

HEAD OF RESEARCH | FRONTIER AI RESEARCH | $25M RAISED

Help push the boundaries of what frontier AI models can do.

Ghost AI is partnering with a fast-growing AI data company building deterministic, pixel-perfect reinforcement learning (RL) environments and trajectory datasets used to advance frontier model capabilities.

They’re looking for a hands-on research leader to own the research roadmap, tackle challenging post-training problems with leading AI research teams, and build an applied research function from the ground up.

Why this opportunity stands out:

• $25M raised to accelerate growth and innovation.
• Own the research roadmap and shape the company's technical direction.
• Build your team — at least four additional researchers are planned.
• Partner with top tier Founders
• Work directly with leading AI research labs on challenging RL and post-training problems.
• Stay hands-on with experiments that meaningfully improve model capabilities.
• Bridge research and engineering to turn breakthroughs into production-ready deliverables.
• This role can be based in NYC or Seattle (3 days onsite - hybrid 2 days remote)

Who we're looking for

• 8+ years of experience as a research scientist or applied researcher.
• Proven leadership experience at a frontier AI lab, leading AI research lab or AI data company.
• Deep, hands-on expertise in reinforcement learning, model training and post-training.
• A track record of impactful research — a notable publication or model that has performed strongly on a recognised benchmark.
• Experience setting research direction, leading projects and delivering measurable results.

Bonus points:

Experience at OpenAI, Anthropic or DeepMind; a PhD involving RL research; NLP publications; or hands-on experience with GRPO and Qwen 2.5.

This is a rare opportunity for an accomplished RL researcher to move beyond individual contributions, own the research agenda and build a team working on some of frontier AI's toughest challenges.

If you've built models, pushed benchmarks and are ready to lead what comes next, we want to hear from you!