Member of Technical Staff - Research

Crucibl Co.; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid Schedule

Full Health Coverage

Equity

Lunch & Snacks

Job summary

Crucibl in San Francisco is building the next generation of enterprise AI. You will explore how frontier models reason in high-stakes decisions and design evaluation methods to test and ship robust solutions.

Join a small, elite team that shapes product direction, collaborates with founders, and operates in a fast-growing, equity-driven environment. We value published research, practical impact, and high-ambiguity problem solving.

Qualifications

• Undeniable signal of excellence: published research, frontier lab experience, or novel technical contributions.
• Deep understanding of how LLMs reason, fail, and can be evaluated.
• Strong fundamentals in ML, statistics, or NLP.
• Ability to convert open questions into testable hypotheses quickly.

Responsibilities

• Push the frontier of judgment by researching how frontier models reason and where they fail.
• Build evaluation frameworks that measure true model judgment and reveal real failures.
• Partner with founders to shape technical vision and roadmap.
• Set rigorous, applied research standards in an AI-first org.

Skills

Frontier models

LLM evaluation

Research experience

ML/NLP fundamentals

Hypothesis testing

Job description

Why Crucibl

Management consulting is a $400B industry built on selling intelligence-for-hire. The model is breaking - not slowly, but now. The biggest frontier in enterprise AI isn't better models. It's judgment at scale: taking the messy, ambiguous decisions that run 85% of the global economy and making them faster, crisper, and more defensible.

Crucibl is building that. We're profitable, growing fast, and delivering for Fortune 500 clients. We raised a $10M seed from Tier 1 VCs - then kept growing on revenue. The client pipeline is full. We're scaling to meet it.

What You'll Do

Push the Frontier of Judgment

• Research how frontier models reason through ambiguous, high-stakes business decisions - and where they fail
• Design novel methods for reasoning, evaluation, and calibration that go beyond standard benchmarks
• Translate open problems in reasoning, uncertainty, and multi-step decision‑making into approaches we can test and ship

Build Evaluation That Matters

• Define what "good judgment" looks like for a model, and build the evaluation frameworks to measure it
• Design experiments that reveal real failure modes, not just leaderboard scores
• Turn findings into concrete recommendations for the product and applied teams

Partner with Founders

• Shape technical vision and roadmap alongside the founding team
• Bring outside research thinking into a company solving a problem few labs are focused on

Set the Bar

• Define what rigorous, applied research looks like in an AI-first organization
• Raise the bar for the team as it grows

Who You Are Must-Haves

• At least one undeniable signal of excellence - published research at a top venue, research role at a frontier lab, or a track record of novel technical contributions
• Deep understanding of how LLMs reason, fail, and can be evaluated - this isn't a theoretical interest, it's core to the job
• Strong fundamentals in ML, statistics, or NLP - we're too small for hand-holding on the technical side
• Comfortable moving from open-ended research question to a testable hypothesis quickly

Strong Signal

• Experience designing evaluation frameworks or benchmarks for reasoning, decision-making, or agentic systems
• Published or shipped work on uncertainty, calibration, multi-step reasoning, or LLM evaluation
• Has operated in a high-growth, high-ambiguity environment
• Thinks like an owner - big picture, not just your part

We're Not Looking For

• Researchers who need a clean, self-contained problem before starting - ambiguity is the job
• Pure benchmark-chasers - we care about judgment that holds up with real clients, not just leaderboard gains
• Researchers without product instincts - your work needs to change what we build and ship, not sit in a paper -- but we are open to publishing work!

Who You'll Work With

Our founders bring deep technology experience (Google-scale systems serving hundreds of millions of users) and domain expertise in high-stakes business decisions from top consulting and private equity firms. You'll be the connective tissue between these worlds, and between the company we are today and the company we're becoming.

Benefits & Perks

• Zero to Outcome: Seed stage means you shape the product, the culture, and the trajectory - not inherit them.
• See Your Work Matter: No abstractions, no layers - you'll see exactly what you built and what it changed.
• The People Around You: A small, elite team that will raise your game. We hire for exceptional, not just experienced.
• Meaningful Equity: Every offer includes a comprehensive salary and equity package.
• Hybrid Schedule: 3 days in-office with real flexibility around the rest. We care about output, not optics.
• Full Health Coverage: Medical, dental, and vision.
• Daily Lunch & Snacks: Fueled and focused, on us.

Work Authorization

Crucibl welcomes applications from candidates requiring visa sponsorship. Sponsorship eligibility is determined during the interview process.

Crucibl is an equal-opportunity employer. We hire on merit and outcomes, and welcome applicants of every background.