Research Engineer - Model Architectures

Bison; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive medical, dental, vision,

FSA plans

Competitive compensation and 401(k)

Relocation and immigration support

In-office snacks and meals provided

Unlimited PTO and company holidays

In-person team in San Francisco

Job summary

Zyphra, an artificial intelligence company based in San Francisco, seeks a Research Engineer - Model Architectures to design and test novel model architectures and training methods. You will work closely with the pre-training team to translate insights into next-generation models.

You will push for improvements in core modeling capabilities, such as loss per FLOP, and address bottlenecks in state-of-the-art models, while maintaining rigorous experimental practices and rapid prototyping.

Qualifications

• Strong research taste and intuition.
• The ability to work through a research project from conception to execution to write-up.
• Strong implementation and prototyping ability to move from idea to experiment quickly.
• Ability to work well in a high-paced research setting.
• Curiosity and joy in understanding intelligence.

Responsibilities

• Design and rigorously test novel model architectures and training methodologies.
• Collaborate closely with the pre-training team to integrate insights into next-gen models.
• Push on bottlenecks like loss per FLOP and efficiency of architectures.
• Demonstrate strong experimental methodology with ablations and thorough evaluation.
• Contribute to a culture of inventing and evaluating 'crazy' ideas with rigor.

Skills

Research intuition

End-to-end research

Prototyping

Team collaboration

Curiosity in AI

RAG retrieval

Reinforcement learning

Control theory

Signal processing

Training pipelines

Ablation experiments

PyTorch

Code comprehension

Publications

Advanced degree

Education

Postgraduate degree in CS/EE/Math/Physics

Job description

Zyphra is an artificial intelligence company based in San Francisco, California.

The Role:

As a Research Engineer - Model Architectures, you will be a core contributor to Zyphra’s AI Architecture Research Team. This will involve designing and rigorously testing novel model architectures and training methodologies, with a focus on improving core modeling capabilities (e.g., loss per flop or loss per parameter) and addressing fundamental bottlenecks in contemporary models. You will also work extremely closely with our pre-training team, who will integrate your insights into our next-generation models.

What We're Looking For / Requirements:

• Strong research taste and intuition

• The ability to work through a research project from conception to execution to write-up

• Strong implementation and prototyping ability can take an idea from conception to experimentation extremely quickly

• The ability to work well and cooperate with others in a high‑paced research setting

• Curiosity, interest, and joy in understanding intelligence.

Qualifications / Additional Skills:

• Previous experience with long‑term memory, RAG/retrieval systems, dynamic/adaptive computation, and alternative approaches to credit assignment

• Experience with reinforcement learning, control theory, and signal processing

• Generally, a joy in inventing and seriously assessing ‘crazy’ ideas, and the ability to have a unique perspective on things

• Understanding of modern training pipelines and the hardware requirements to design efficient architectures for GPU hardware

• Strong grasp of proper experimental methodology for running rigorous ablations and other hypothesis testing

• High proficiency with PyTorch and Python.

• Strong ability to jump into large pre-existing codebases and rapidly get up to speed and become productive

• Previously published machine learning research in well‑respected venues

• Postgraduate degree in a scientific subject (Computer Science, EE/EECS, Math, Physics)

Why Work at Zyphra:

• Our research methodology is to make grounded, methodical steps toward ambitious goals. Both deep research and engineering excellence are equally valued

• We strongly value new and crazy ideas and are very willing to bet big on new ideas

• We move as quickly as we can; we aim to minimize the bar to impact as low as possible

• We all enjoy what we do and love discussing AI

Benefits and Perks:

• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and FSA plans

• Competitive compensation and 401(k) plan

• Relocation and immigration support on a case-by-case basis

• In‑office snacks and meals provided

• Unlimited PTO and company holidays

• In‑person team in San Francisco with a collaborative, high‑energy environment