Research Engineer, Asta

Ai2; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 118,800 - 178,200; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision coverage

401k plan

Commuting and fitness expenses assistance

Generous vacation and sick leave policies

Annual bonuses

Job summary

Ai2 is looking for individuals to build infrastructure for cutting-edge AI and machine learning research in Seattle. You will contribute to the Asta Project, focused on advancing scientific discovery through AI tools. Candidates should have a Bachelor's degree in a relevant field and at least 2 years of experience in ML infrastructure. The role offers competitive compensation, benefits, and a collaborative office environment on the waterfront in Seattle.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field or equivalent experience.
• 2+ years of experience building agentic infrastructure.
• Strong software engineering skills, particularly in building performant systems.

Responsibilities

• Building infrastructure for LLM and agentic research.
• Creating AI tools for scientific discovery.
• Designing and training machine learning models for agentic workflows.

Skills

Python

Machine Learning

Deep Learning

Natural Language Processing

Reinforcement Learning

Software Engineering

Collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS/EE/Data Science/Applied Mathematics/Statistics/ML/NLP

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Docker

GCP

Job description

Persons in these roles are expected to work from our offices in Seattle. On‑site requirements vary based on position and team. If you have questions about on‑site work arrangements for this role, please ask your recruiter.

Base salary range is $118,800 - $178,200, and in addition we have generous bonus plans to provide a competitive compensation package.

Who You Are

Are you passionate about AI and its potential to help accelerate science?

Ai2’s Asta Project (https://allenai.org/asta) aims to rapidly advance science, developing solutions in the areas of AI research assistants for scientists, literature understanding and synthesis, end‑to‑end discovery, human‑AI interaction and intelligent interfaces, data‑driven discovery, agents that can learn over time, methods for training agentic models, and the evaluation and benchmarking of agents.

Focus Areas

• Automated and AI‑assisted scientific discovery.
• Agentic planning, reasoning, learning, and evaluation.
• Data‑driven discovery.
• Literature-driven ideation and discovery.
• Human‑Agent Collaboration: Proactivity, Long‑running agent, Memory, and context management.
• Continual learning, representation, and reasoning.
• Post‑training, model tuning, distillation, and specialization.

Who We Are

The Asta Team (Semantic Scholar and Aristo, based in Seattle) at the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) is an interdisciplinary research and engineering team focused on AI, ML, NLP, and HCI to support our mission of accelerating science with intelligent and interactive research assistants. All of our scientific artifacts (data, model, software, papers) are open‑sourced (https://github.com/allenai) and maintained. We regularly publish and present at high‑profile journal/conferences in ML, NLP, HCI, and Accessibility.

• https://allenai.org/asta
• https://allenai.org/blog/autodiscovery
• https://allenai.org/papers

Your Next Challenge

The essential functions include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Building infrastructure to facilitate the next generation of LLM and agentic research.
• Creating AI tools to facilitate scientific discovery in domains such as biology, cancer research, neuroscience, social science, etc.
• Designing, building, and training machine learning or language models for agentic workflows.
• Bridging the gap between cutting‑edge research and a widely adopted product.
• Bringing software engineering best practices to a research environment.
• Supporting and collaborating with an open‑source community.
• Releasing your contributions back to the broader community in the form of open source software, model releases, and additions to Ai2’s public API and open research datasets, as well as technical reports.

What You’ll Need

• A bachelor’s degree in CS/EE/Data Science/Applied Mathematics/Statistics/ML/NLP, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience, and expertise in building ML infrastructure.
• 2+ years of experience building agentic infrastructure that handles tools, skills, and other artifacts.
• 2+ years of experience building infrastructure that handles data preprocessing/transformation and machine learning model training, evaluation, inference, and deployment.
• Knowledge of modern deep learning, natural language processing, and reinforcement learning techniques.
• Strong software engineering skills, particularly around building performant systems and debugging.
• Must have experience with Python and PyTorch/Jax/Tensorflow, agentic frameworks (e.g., MCP), as well as feel at ease in picking up new programming languages, libraries, or APIs as tools as project needs evolve.
• Familiarity with cloud compute resources (e.g., GCP, AWS, Modal) and containerization (e.g., Docker).
• Strong collaboration and communication skills – our environment is small and collaborative, and we’d like you to thrive while working closely with others, sometimes with complementary skills/perspectives.

Bonus Qualifications

• Advanced degree in CS/EE/Data Science/Applied Mathematics/Statistics/ML/NLP or related fields and/or relevant and equivalent engineering experience.
• Contributions to open‑source ML or research libraries (e.g., spaCy, AllenNLP, transformers, langchain).
• Experience successfully operating at scale in a production setting.
• Experience in HPC settings.
• Curiosity about AI research.

Physical Demands and Work Environment

• Must be able to remain in a stationary position for long periods of time.
• The ability to communicate information and ideas so others will understand. Must be able to exchange accurate information in these situations.
• The ability to observe details at close range.
• Can work under deadlines.

A Little More About Ai2

• We are a learning organization – everything Ai2 does is ground‑breaking, and we are learning every day.
• We value diversity – we seek to hire, support, and promote people from all genders, ethnicities, and all levels of experience regardless of age.
• We value inclusion – we understand the value that people’s individual experiences and perspectives can bring to an organization, and we are building a culture in which all voices are heard, respected and considered.
• We emphasize a healthy work/life balance – we believe our team members are happiest and most productive when their work/life balance is optimized. We offer generous paid vacation and sick leave as well as family leave.
• We are collaborative and transparent – we consider ourselves a team, all moving with a common purpose.
• We are in Seattle – our office is on the water! We have mountains, lakes, four seasons, we bike to work, a vibrant theater scene, and kayaks outside our front door. We welcome interest from applicants from outside the United States.
• We are friendly – chances are you will like every one of the 200+ people who work here.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Ai2 is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other legally protected characteristics. We participate in E‑Verify and provide the federal government with your Form I‑9 information to confirm you are authorized to work in the U.S.

Benefits

• Team members and their families are covered by medical, dental, vision, and an employee assistance program.
• Team members are able to enroll in our health savings account plan, our healthcare reimbursement arrangement plan, and our health care and dependent care flexible spending account plans.
• Team members are able to enroll in our company’s 401k plan.
• Team members will receive $125 per month to assist with commuting or internet expenses and $200 per month for fitness and wellbeing expenses.
• Team members will also receive up to ten sick days per year, up to seven personal days per year, up to 20 vacation days per year and twelve paid holidays throughout the calendar year.
• Team members will be able to receive annual bonuses and can participate in the long‑term incentive plan.

Note: This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by the team members of this position. Team members will be required to follow any other job‑related instructions and to perform any other job‑related duties requested by any person authorized to give instructions or assignments. All duties and responsibilities are essential functions and requirements and are subject to possible modification to reasonably accommodate individuals with disabilities. To perform this job successfully, the team member(s) will possess the skills, aptitudes, and abilities to perform each duty proficiently. This document does not create an employment contract, implied or otherwise.