Research Scientist, Agent Robustness

Scale AI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 197,400 - 246,750; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive health coverage

Retirement benefits

Generous PTO

Learning and development stipend

Job summary

A leading AI research organization in San Francisco is seeking a Research Scientist to work on agent robustness. The role involves conducting research on AI safety, designing tests for AI agents, and developing mitigations for potential risks. Candidates should have a Ph.D. and a strong background in machine learning, with at least three years of experience in sophisticated ML problems. This full-time position offers a competitive salary and comprehensive benefits including health coverage, retirement plans, and generous PTO.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience addressing sophisticated ML problems.
• Experience with RL techniques like RLHF and DPO.
• Track record of published research in machine learning.

Responsibilities

• Conduct research on AI agents and safety protocols.
• Design tests for AI agents' risk factors.
• Develop mitigations for AI agents' failure modes.

Skills

Technical research collaboration

Safety and alignment in AI

Communication skills

Agent evaluation frameworks

Red-teaming and adversarial testing

Education

Ph.D. in a relevant field

Tools

SWE-bench

RLHF

DPO

Job description

Scale Labs, Research Scientist — Agent Robustness

As the leading data and evaluation partner for frontier AI companies, Scale plays an integral role in understanding the capabilities and safeguarding AI models and systems. Building on this expertise, Scale Labs has launched a new team focused on policy research, to bridge the gap between AI research and global policymakers to make informed, scientific decisions about AI risks and capabilities.

Our research tackles the hardest problems in agent robustness, AI control protocols, and AI risk evaluations to help governments, industry, and the public understand and mitigate AI risk while maximizing AI adoption. This team collaborates broadly across industry, the public sector, and academia and regularly publishes our findings. We are actively seeking talented researchers to join us in shaping this vision.

As a Research Scientist working on Agent Robustness you will work on the fundamental challenges of building AI agents that are safe and aligned with humans. For example, you might:

• Research the science of AI agent capabilities with a focus on how they relate to safety, risk factors, and methodologies for benchmarking them;
• Design and build harnesses to test AI agents’ tendency to take harmful actions when pressured to do so by users or tricked into doing so by elements of their environment;
• Design and build exploits and mitigations for new and unique failure modes that arise as AI agents gain affordances like coding, web browsing, and computer use;
• Characterize and design mitigations for potential failure modes or broader risks of systems involving multiple interacting AI agents.

Ideally you’d have:

• Commitment to our mission of promoting safe, secure, and trustworthy AI deployments in the industry as frontier AI capabilities continue to advance.
• Practical experience conducting technical research collaboratively. You should be comfortable building and leveraging agent scaffolding, designing evaluation harnesses, and quickly turning new ideas from the research literature into working prototypes.
• Experience with post-training and RL techniques such as RLHF, DPO, GRPO, and similar approaches.
• A track record of published research in machine learning, particularly in generative AI.
• At least three years of experience addressing sophisticated ML problems, whether in a research setting or in product development.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills to operate in a cross‑functional team.

Nice to have:

• Hands‑on experience with agent evaluation frameworks such as SWE‑bench, WebArena, OSWorld, Inspect, or similar tools.
• Experience with red‑teaming, prompt injection, or adversarial testing of AI systems.

Our research interviews are crafted to assess candidates' skills in practical ML prototyping and debugging, their grasp of research concepts, and their alignment with our organizational culture. We will not ask any LeetCode‑style questions. If you’re excited about advancing AI safety and contributing to our mission, we encourage you to apply, even if your experience doesn’t perfectly align with every requirement.

Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position, determined by work location and additional factors, including job‑related skills, experience, interview performance, and relevant education or training. Scale employees in eligible roles are also granted equity based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process, and confirm whether the hired role will be eligible for equity grant. You’ll also receive benefits including, but not limited to: Comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, a learning and development stipend, and generous PTO. Additionally, this role may be eligible for additional benefits such as a commuter stipend. Base salary range for this full‑time position: $197,400 — $246,750 USD.

PLEASE NOTE: Our policy requires a 90‑day waiting period before reconsidering candidates for the same role. This allows us to ensure a fair and thorough evaluation of all applicants.

About Us:

At Scale, our mission is to develop reliable AI systems for the world's most important decisions. Our products provide the high‑quality data and full‑stack technologies that power the world's leading models, and help enterprises and governments build, deploy, and oversee AI applications that deliver real impact. We work closely with industry leaders like Meta, Cisco, DLA Piper, Mayo Clinic, Time Inc., the Government of Qatar, and U.S. government agencies including the Army and Air Force. We are expanding our team to accelerate the development of AI applications.

We believe that everyone should be able to bring their whole selves to work, which is why we are proud to be an inclusive and equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability status, gender identity or Veteran status.

We are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with physical and mental disabilities. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation in the application or recruiting process due to a disability, please contact us at [e-mail]. Please see the United States Department of Labor's Know Your Rights poster for additional information. We comply with the United States Department of Labor's Pay Transparency provision.

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