Machine Learning Research Engineer Software company Mountain View, California $200k to $350k USD base a year Posted yesterday

raydar; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 350,000; Full time

Job summary

Raydar in Mountain View, CA is seeking a Machine Learning Research Engineer to drive applied language-model research from initial questions through experiments to a production-ready model. This is an early technical position with close collaboration alongside leadership, engineers and clients.

This role will convert workflows into research questions, run training and RL experiments, and deliver deployable solutions or publishable results while working with other researchers and infrastructure

Qualifications

• Significant practical background in adapting language models after pretraining.
• A track record where modeling work reached real use or outside review.
• Published research or open-source machine learning contributions in this area.

Responsibilities

• Convert client workflows and observed model shortcomings into focused research questions, evaluation suites and experiments.
• Create training datasets, reward functions and automated checkers, and run fine-tuning, preference-based and reinforcement learning experiments.
• Investigate failed training runs and rely on ablation studies and held-out testing to learn which changes truly raise quality.
• Lead projects from start to finish, ending with a deployed model or a publishable result.

Skills

Python

PyTorch

Experimentation

Research to deployment

Communication

Education

Master's or PhD in Computer Science

Job description

# Machine Learning Research EngineerSoftware company* LocationMountain View, California* TypeFull-time* Posted20 October 2026Apply for this roleTalk to us firstYou apply on Workable, where Raydar manages applications.The role, as published## About the companyOur client is a software company.## The roleRaydar is recruiting for this role on behalf of our client. Drive applied machine learning research on language models, moving from an initial question through experimentation to a model ready for real-world use. This is an early technical position with close collaboration alongside company leadership, engineers and clients.## What you'll do* Convert client workflows and observed model shortcomings into focused research questions, evaluation suites and experiments.* **Create training datasets**, reward functions and automated checkers, and run fine-tuning, preference-based and reinforcement learning experiments.* Investigate failed training runs and rely on ablation studies and held-out testing to learn which changes truly raise quality.* **Lead projects from start to finish**, ending with a deployed model or a publishable result.* Collaborate with fellow researchers and infrastructure engineers to ship successful models and study how they behave live.## What we're looking for* Significant practical background in adapting language models after pretraining, with personal accountability for experiments and their outcomes.* A track record where your modeling work reached real use or outside review, whether through a shipped product, a widely adopted open model, or an accepted paper.* Published research or open-source machine learning contributions in this area.* Prior experience at an organization operating at the leading edge of AI.* Strong Python and PyTorch skills, including writing and debugging training code on your own.* Good analytical judgment, with the ability to explain why a method succeeded and where a metric gave a false signal.* Confidence working through ambiguous technical problems and speaking directly with clients and colleagues.## Bonus points* Experience mentoring more junior engineers or researchers.* Master's or PhD in Computer Science.* Background in areas such as long-horizon reinforcement learning, model compression, generated training data, reward design or large-scale distributed training.## Location and work model* Mountain View, CA, United States* On-site, 5 days a week in the office* Full-time## Compensation, as the posting describes it* EquityPay$200k to $350kUSD base a year