Research Engineer

Bonfirevc; United States; Hybrid; USD 85,000 - 115,000; Full time

Job summary

Bonfirevc is seeking a Research Engineer to enable applied decision research by building the infrastructure for next-generation decision systems. The role involves developing prototypes, evaluation tools, and system architectures while ensuring rapid iteration and strong validation processes.

Ideal candidates will possess strong software engineering skills and have experience in creating experimental or prototype systems. This is a unique opportunity to contribute significantly to the research and development efforts Central to Bonfirevc's mission.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated ability to implement experimental systems quickly.
• Experience in developing evaluation logic and validating systems.
• Ability to work collaboratively with research-oriented teams.

Responsibilities

• Build research prototypes and sandbox environments.
• Develop evaluation tooling for decision systems.
• Implement experimental system architectures.

Skills

Strong software engineering fundamentals

Experience building experimental or prototype systems

Comfort working in ambiguous research environments

Ability to balance speed and technical rigor

Familiarity with AI pipelines or decision architectures

Job description

Research Engineer

Team: Research & Development
Location: Flexible / Remote
Reporting to: Head of R&D

Role Overview

Rwazi’s research initiatives require rapid experimentation, prototyping, and system validation.

The Research Engineer enables applied research through technical system construction.

This role builds prototypes, experimental pipelines, evaluation tooling, and research infrastructure that allow decision concepts to be tested under real-world constraints.

The Research Engineer operationalizes research velocity.

Core Mandate

The Research Engineer is accountable for:

• Building research prototypes and sandbox environments
• Developing evaluation tooling for decision systems
• Implementing experimental system architectures
• Enabling fast iteration between theory and validation
• Maintaining technical research infrastructure

This role bridges conceptual research and system reality.

Key Responsibilities

Prototype Development

• Implement experimental decision pipelines
• Build modular, testable research architectures
• Translate conceptual models into runnable systems

Research Tooling & Infrastructure

• Create evaluation frameworks for reasoning outputs
• Build simulation environments for controlled testing
• Develop benchmarking systems for decision performance

Experiment Enablement

• Implement A/B logic and structured experiment tracking
• Optimize iteration cycles for research testing
• Ensure reproducibility of experimental results

System Integration Support

• Collaborate with Decision Research Scientists to encode models
• Provide technical validation of research concepts
• Identify engineering constraints early

Role Impact

Strong performance in this role results in:

• Faster research iteration cycles
• More reliable prototype validation
• Reduced gap between research and production
• Higher experimental rigor

This role accelerates Rwazi’s long-term capability development.

What This Role Is Not

• This is not product feature engineering
• This is not maintenance development
• This is not short-term optimization

This role builds experimental systems.

Qualifications and Profile

We are looking for individuals who demonstrate:

• Strong software engineering fundamentals
• Experience building experimental or prototype systems
• Comfort working in ambiguous research environments
• Ability to balance speed and technical rigor
• Familiarity with AI pipelines or decision architectures

Candidates may come from research labs, AI startups, advanced analytics teams, or system architecture roles.

How Candidates Are Evaluated

Candidates are evaluated based on:

• Their ability to rapidly implement experimental systems
• Technical clarity and modularity of their code
• Comfort working with incomplete specifications
• Understanding of evaluation logic and system validation
• Ability to collaborate with research-oriented thinkers

Summary

The Research Engineer enables Rwazi’s applied decision research by building the technical infrastructure required to explore, validate, and evolve next-generation decision systems.

If you'd like, we can next define:

• Decision Systems Fellow (elite individual contributor track)
• AI Evaluation & Alignment Lead
• Advanced Simulation Architect
• Future Platforms Lab