Research Engineer

Sesame AI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) matching

Health, vision, and dental benefits

Unlimited PTO

Dependent health benefits

Flexible spending account (FSA)

Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

Stock options

Job summary

Sesame is designing a new kind of computer where voice agents blend into daily life. Sesame seeks a research engineer who is research-oriented, up-to-date with recent papers, and capable of inventing new solutions for production-ready ML systems.

You will design, build, and ship novel architectures, scale LLM training and inference, and develop robust training and evaluation pipelines. A strong background in PyTorch and production-grade software is essential.

Qualifications

• Hands-on PyTorch experience in production code.
• Production-grade software engineering across the stack.
• Experience training or fine-tuning LLMs.
• Experience designing evaluation metrics and benchmarks reflecting user experience.
• Familiarity with the ML lifecycle: dataset ops, training, evaluation, deployment, monitoring.
• Shipping complex projects to production, ideally user-facing or online ML systems.
• Ability to work independently and with teammates.
• Experience influencing technical direction with product, infra, and research partners.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and ship novel architectures and models to production.
• Scale LLM training and inference, improving latency, throughput, and cost.
• Build robust training and evaluation pipelines.
• Develop tooling for safe, privacy-aware dataset curation and discovery.

Skills

PyTorch

Production code

LLM training

Evaluation metrics

ML lifecycle

Dataset pipelines

Independence

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

About Sesame

Sesame believes in a future where computers are lifelike - with the ability to see, hear, and collaborate with us in ways that feel natural and human. With this vision, we're designing a new kind of computer, focused on making voice agents part of our daily lives. Our team brings together founders from Oculus and Ubiquity6, alongside proven leaders from Meta, Google, and Apple, with deep expertise spanning hardware and software. Join us in shaping a future where computers truly come alive.

About the Role

New and novel approaches are needed to realize all of our product goals. As a Research engineer at Sesame, you are a research-oriented person with experience in. You are up to date on recent papers and approaches and you have the creativity and the intuition to come up with new solutions based on the application at hand.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and ship novel architectures and models to production.
• Scale LLM training and inference, improving latency, throughput, and cost.
• Build robust training and evaluation pipelines.
• Develop tooling for safe, versioned, privacy-aware dataset curation and discovery.

Required Qualifications:

• Strong, hands-on experience with PyTorch.
• Solid software engineering skills and a genuine interest in ML, with experience writing production code across the stack.
• Practical experience training or fine-tuning LLMs, and a good understanding of how LLM training algorithms work.
• Experience designing evaluation metrics and harnesses that reflect real user experience.
• Familiarity with the ML lifecycle: dataset operations, training pipelines, evaluation frameworks, deployment, and monitoring.
• Experience shipping complex projects to production, ideally user-facing or online ML systems, and adapting as requirements change.
• Good judgment about when to work independently and when to bring in teammates.
• Experience contributing to technical direction, building consensus, and working well with product, infrastructure, and research partners.

Sesame is committed to a workplace where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered. We welcome all qualified applicants, embracing diversity in race, gender, identity, orientation, ability, and more. We provide reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities. Contact [e-mail] for assistance.

Full-time Employee Benefits:

• 401 (k) max employer match: 3.5% of compensation
• 100% employer-paid health, vision, and dental benefits for you and your dependents
• Unlimited PTO and sick time
• Flexible spending account with employer matching up to $1,650/year (medical FSA)
• Guardian Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Opportunity to share in the company's success with competitive stock options

Benefits do not apply to contingent/contract workers.