Remote RL Research Engineer — Environments & Pipelines

Zekai; United States; Remote; USD 200,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity compensation

Performance-based bonuses

Health insurance reimbursement

401(K) plan with company match

Remote-first workforce

Job summary

Zekai is seeking a Research Engineer to design and scale reinforcement learning environments, training pipelines, and evaluation systems for cutting-edge AI models. This role blends research with production, translating ideas into high-performance software.

You will build automated data generation, perform fine-tuning on open-source models, and contribute to benchmarking and partner evaluations while collaborating in a fast-paced, remote-first team.

Qualifications

• Deep experience in Reinforcement Learning, including environment design and training dynamics.
• Strong track record of building and scaling RL systems, pipelines, or experimentation frameworks.
• Proficient in automation and data generation, including synthetic data pipelines.
• Familiar with automated evaluation systems, model validation, and quality assurance workflows.
• Experienced in fine-tuning and evaluating open-source ML models.
• Clear, concise communicator with strong technical writing skills.
• Comfortable operating in fast-paced, research-driven, and highly collaborative environments.

Responsibilities

• Architect self-contained RL environments with reward functions, verifiers, and evaluation logic.
• Design and scale episode pipelines and MCPs for reproducible experiments.
• Build automated data generation systems using synthetic data to accelerate training cycles.
• Develop AI-driven evaluation and QA systems for automated grading, validation, and feedback.

Skills

Reinforcement Learning

Environment design

RL systems scaling

Pipelines

Automation

Data generation

Synthetic data

Evaluation systems

Model validation

Quality assurance

Fine-tuning models

Open-source ML

Technical writing

Communication skills

Collaborative work

Tools

None

Job description

Zekai is seeking a Research Engineer to design and scale reinforcement learning environments, training pipelines, and evaluation systems for cutting-edge AI models. This role blends research with production, translating ideas into high-performance software.

You will build automated data generation, perform fine-tuning on open-source models, and contribute to benchmarking and partner evaluations while collaborating in a fast-paced, remote-first team.