Research Coordinator

After Thought; Los Angeles (CA); Hybrid; USD 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare

Vision and Dental

401(k)

Home Office Benefit

Commuter Benefit

Gym Membership

Wellness Spend

Daily meals

Offsites and Retreats

Job summary

After Thought is hiring a Research Coordinator to streamline open-ended research with structure and pace, supporting senior researchers. You’ll protect creative ambiguity while ensuring progress, keeping the team moving and accountable across documentation and shared tools.

You’ll operate across Notion, Slack, Linear, and Weights & Biases, building processes that reduce cognitive load and foster efficient collaboration in a fast-paced AI research environment.

Qualifications

• Direct experience in a research lab, R&D team, or scientific organization.
• Experience coordinating or managing in academic, scientific, or engineering settings.
• Background driving execution without formal authority.
• Ideal: lab management, research operations, or program coordination in a university, national lab, or frontier tech company.

Responsibilities

• Establish and maintain a healthy operational rhythm across the team.
• Surface blockers early and help resolve them quickly.
• Ensure work stays focused and doesn't drift into distraction.
• Help researchers break ambiguous goals into concrete next steps.
• Track commitments and follow through — with empathy and persistence.
• Create visibility into who's working on what, and what's next.
• Run short, effective daily check-ins (10-15 min per person).
• Synthesize updates across Slack, GitHub, and Notion into clear summaries.
• Connect people with the resources and collaborators they need.
• Maintain and improve our core tools: Linear, GitHub, Notion, Weights & Biases.
• Keep project tracking accurate, up-to-date, and useful — not bureaucratic.
• Enforce process standards across the team and evolve them as we learn.
• Ensure systems reduce cognitive load, not add to it.
• Maintain and improve internally built research tools and shared repositories.
• Keep codebases organized, documented, and accessible to the team.

Skills

Coordination

Communication

Process design

Documentation

Accountability

Education

Bachelor's or higher in technical/science field

Tools

Linear

Notion

Slack

Weights & Biases

Experiment tracking systems

AWS

GCP

GitHub

CI/CD

Job description

After Thought is pioneering a new paradigm within AI that builds upon the progress of the last decade of deep learning by taking advantage of overlooked ideas and techniques within other areas of AI (e.g., computational cognitive science). We believe that the greatest transformative potential of AI lies within real-world applications for critical industries (e.g., healthcare, robotics, manufacturing, finance, intelligence / strategic operations, engineering design, etc.) — this potential has not yet been unlocked and it will take new ideas to realize that potential. Our mission is to originate and execute on those new ideas in order to accelerate and amplify the near‑term impact of AI.

The Role

We're hiring a Research Coordinator to help our small, senior research team move faster and stay focused — amplifying the science through coordinated problem solving.

This is a unique role: you'll bring structure, momentum, and clarity to open‑ended research while protecting the creative ambiguity that makes breakthroughs possible. You understand how research actually works — the false starts, the pivots, the long uncertainty horizons — and you know how to keep things moving without forcing premature conclusions.

You're the operational backbone that empowers researchers to think deeply, knowing someone has their back on everything else.

About After Thought

After Thought is pioneering a new paradigm within AI that builds upon the progress of the last decade of deep learning by taking advantage of overlooked ideas and techniques within other areas of AI (e.g., computational cognitive science). We believe that the greatest transformative potential of AI lies within real‑world applications for critical industries (e.g., healthcare, robotics, manufacturing, finance, intelligence / strategic operations, engineering design, etc.) — this potential has not yet been unlocked and it will take new ideas to realize that potential. Our mission is to originate and execute on those new ideas in order to accelerate and amplify the near‑term impact of AI.

The Role

We're hiring a Research Coordinator to help our small, senior research team move faster and stay focused — amplifying the science through coordinated problem solving.

This is a unique role: you'll bring structure, momentum, and clarity to open‑ended research while protecting the creative ambiguity that makes breakthroughs possible. You understand how research actually works — the false starts, the pivots, the long uncertainty horizons — and you know how to keep things moving without forcing premature conclusions.

You're the operational backbone that empowers researchers to think deeply, knowing someone has their back on everything else.

In short: You'll help brilliant people do their best work by keeping things moving, honest, and unblocked.

What You'll Do

Keep the Team Moving

• Establish and maintain a healthy operational rhythm across the team
• Surface blockers early and help resolve them quickly
• Ensure work stays focused and doesn't drift into distraction

Drive Clarity and Accountability

• Help researchers break ambiguous goals into concrete next steps
• Track commitments and follow through — with empathy and persistence
• Create visibility into who's working on what, and what's next

Support Daily Operations

• Run short, effective daily check-ins (10-15 min per person)
• Synthesize updates across Slack, GitHub, and Notion into clear summaries
• Connect people with the resources and collaborators they need

Own Systems of Record

• Maintain and improve our core tools: Linear, GitHub, Notion, Weights & Biases
• Keep project tracking accurate, up-to-date, and useful — not bureaucratic
• Enforce process standards across the team and evolve them as we learn
• Ensure systems reduce cognitive load, not add to it
• Maintain and improve internally built research tools and shared repositories
• Keep codebases organized, documented, and accessible to the team

Own Documentation & Knowledge Management

• Maintain internal documentation in Notion — SOPs, how‑tos, onboarding guides, decision logs
• Organize and curate research artifacts — papers read, prior experiments, reference materials
• Build systems that make institutional knowledge searchable and accessible
• Serve as the team's "research memory" — know where things are and help people find them
• Keep Weights & Biases runs properly tagged, organized, and easy to navigate
• Enforce naming conventions and organizational standards across data artifacts

Help Researchers Prioritize

• Reduce decision fatigue by surfacing what matters most
• Protect focus time by absorbing coordination overhead
• Help researchers stay on track without micromanaging
• Make it easy to know what to work on next

Protect Research Integrity

• Track experiments, hypotheses, and decision points — you understand the scientific method
• Help the team know when to double down — and when to move on
• Champion intellectual honesty over narrative, hoop‑jumping, or hype

What This Role Isn't

To be clear: this isn't a traditional PM role. You won't be setting technical direction, choosing research bets, or owning roadmaps. The research team drives the "what" — you drive the "how fast" and "how smoothly."

Who You Are

You Bring

• Natural energy and presence — people enjoy working with you
• A bias toward action and low tolerance for unnecessary delay
• The ability to hold people accountable while keeping relationships strong
• Clear, direct communication skills
• Comfort navigating ambiguity without forcing premature clarity

Background

We're looking for someone with roots in technical, scientific, or academic environments:

• Required: Direct experience in a research lab, R&D team, or scientific organization
• Experience coordinating or managing in academic, scientific, or engineering settings
• Background driving execution without formal authority — you've made things happen through influence, not hierarchy
• Ideal: lab management, research operations, or program coordination in a university, national lab, or frontier tech company

Required Technical Proficiency

You’ll use these tools daily — prior experience is required:

• Project management: Linear, Notion, Slack
• Research & ML ops: Weights & Biases, experiment tracking systems
• Infrastructure: Cloud platforms (AWS/GCP), GitHub, CI/CD pipelines
• Remote collaboration: Async‑first communication and distributed team workflows

Good to know: A technical or scientific background is a strong plus — you'll earn credibility faster if you speak the language. AI literacy is helpful. Strong opinions about AI strategy are not — we need someone focused on process, not direction.

You'd Be Great for This Role If You Are...

• Highly disciplined — you thrive on structure, follow‑through, and doing what you said you'd do
• Routine‑oriented — you find satisfaction in consistent rhythms and reliable processes
• Technical but not territorial — you're comfortable with code, data, and infrastructure without needing to own the science
• A people person — you genuinely enjoy helping others succeed and building trust across a team
• Excited about AI research — you care about the mission, even if your role is operational
• Detail‑oriented without losing the big picture — you notice the small stuff but know when it matters
• Calm under ambiguity — research is messy, and you're okay with that

What Success Looks Like

• The team ships faster without burning out
• Researchers feel supported, not surveilled
• Blockers surface early and get resolved quickly
• The right work gets prioritized, and stalled work gets addressed honestly
• Researchers can quickly find what they need — past experiments, decisions, context — without hunting
• You become someone the team trusts and relies on

Why Join Us

You’ll be part of a small, ambitious team of smart and empathetic people backed by top‑tier investors, working on some of the most exciting problems in AI. We value original thinking, intellectual honesty, and people who care strongly both about doing great work and doing that work with great people.

This is a chance to shape how a world‑class research team operates — and to grow alongside a company at the frontier of AI.

Benefits

• Healthcare, Vision, Dental, and 401(k)
• Generous Travel Budget
• Paid Academic and Industry Attendances
• Home Office Benefit
• Commuter Benefit
• Gym Membership
• Wellness Spend
• Daily provided meals, snacks
• Frequent Offsites, Onsites, and Retreats
• Continuing Education

Disclaimer

After Thought AI Corp. is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

Candidates and employees are always evaluated based on merit, qualifications, and performance.

We will never discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, national origin, ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status.