Research Scientist, Agent Robustness

Scale; San Francisco, New York (CA, NY); On-site; USD 216,000 - 270,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Benefits

Commuter stipend

Job summary

Scale Labs seeks a Research Scientist focused on Agent Robustness in a multi-location setting. You will tackle fundamental challenges in building safe AI agents and aligning them with humans, including benchmarking methods and mitigation strategies.

Ideal candidates have 3+ years in ML research, a publications track record in ML, and experience with RLHF, DPO, or GRPO, plus strong cross-functional communication. Some familiarity with agent evaluation tooling is a plus.

Qualifications

• 3+ years addressing sophisticated ML problems in research or product development.
• Experience with post-training and RL techniques such as RLHF, DPO, GRPO.
• Track record of published ML research, especially in generative AI.
• Strong written and verbal communication for cross-functional collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Research AI agent capabilities with a focus on safety and risk factors.
• Design and build evaluation harnesses to benchmark agent behavior.
• Develop exploits and mitigations for novel failure modes in agents with capabilities.
• Collaborate across industry, public sector, and academia to publish findings.

Skills

ML research

RLHF/DPO/GRPO

Publications

Cross-functional comms

3+ years ML

Tools

Agent scaffolding

Evaluation harnesses

SWE-bench/WebArena

Inspect

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 and may be inclusive of several career levels at Scale; it will be determined during the interview process based on work location and additional factors, including job‑related skills, experience, qualifications, 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.

The base salary range for this full‑time position in the locations of San Francisco, New York, Seattle is:

$216,000 - $270,000 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, Ernst & Young, 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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