Member of Technical Staff, Research Research · San Francisco, CA or New York, NY · On-site ·

Primitive Labs AI Inc.; New York (NY); On-site; USD 190,000 - 270,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

Paid time off

Vacation

Job summary

Primitive Labs is building AI systems that are human-aligned, hiring for potential and rewarding impactful research. The role sits in San Francisco or New York, full-time, with competitive salary and meaningful equity.

You will lead research directions, design experiments, and build simulations for behavioral intelligence agents. Expect to publish work, contribute to open-source projects, and help shape our research program through papers and talks.

Qualifications

• Led research in agents, ML, simulation, or cognitive science.
• Built the systems needed to test your ideas.
• Worked deeply with large models and agents.
• Turned research into production systems.
• Cares about human behavior, not just task completion.

Responsibilities

• Own research directions from question to production.
• Design experiments for agent behavior.
• Build simulations of real user decision-making.
• Develop behavioral-fidelity benchmarks.
• Train and evaluate agents against human data.
• Translate research findings into model, memory, and runtime improvements.
• Publish papers, technical write-ups, and open-source work.

Skills

Agents research

Machine learning

Simulation

Cognitive science

Production systems

Job description

Research · San Francisco or New York · Full-time

Member of Technical Staff, Research

Competitive salary + meaningful equity

At Primitive Labs our mission is to make human behavior a first-class primitive of software development.

In this role, you will build the research systems behind our behavioral intelligence agents. Your work will span simulation architectures, memory systems, computational cognitive science, continual learning, and agent architectures. The goal is to improve how agents model human behavior, make decisions, and act across real product experiences. You will also help define our research program through papers, technical writing, open‑source work, and conference talks.

Responsibilities

• Own research directions from question to production.
• Design experiments for agent behavior.
• Build simulations of real user decision‑making.
• Develop behavioral‑fidelity benchmarks.
• Train and evaluate agents against human data.
• Translate research findings into model, memory, and runtime improvements.
• Publish papers, technical write‑ups, and open‑source work.

Qualifications

• Led research in agents, ML, simulation, or cognitive science.
• Build the systems needed to test your ideas.
• Work deeply with large models and agents.
• Turn research into production systems.
• Care about human behavior, not just task completion.

• Benefits include medical, dental, and vision coverage, plus paid time off and vacation.

We hire for potential, and we base compensation on what we believe you can achieve rather than years of experience or a list of skills.

About Primitive Labs

Primitive Labs is building AI systems that are human‑aligned. As machines make more of the decisions that shape our lives, we are working to keep people at the center of them. Our founding team comes from Amazon Artificial General Intelligence and AWS. We are backed by top‑tier venture firms and investors, and our advisors are researchers and operators with backgrounds from OpenAI, Google, Amazon, and many other leading organizations. Check out our launch blog to learn more.

Everyone at Primitive Labs is a builder. Our whole team pushes code and contributes to research. The best work, in our experience, comes from a few people trusted with real ownership and left to do it well, with no layers in between. We move quickly and speak honestly. We hold that every belief can be challenged, especially our own. We want people who are deeply passionate about their work and have a virtually unlimited intellectual curiosity. If you believe in building AI systems that are human‑aligned and genuinely love solving hard problems, we would love to talk.

Primitive Labs AI Inc. is an equal opportunity employer.