Senior Research Scientist – AI

Primary; United States; On-site; USD 200,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Primary is seeking an exceptional Research Scientist to define and lead the next generation of AI systems for automated knowledge acquisition, reasoning and evaluation. Working closely with the Chief Scientist, you will shape scientific direction and implement and evaluate novel AI methods.

This leadership role emphasizes scientific judgement and technical leadership over management, with opportunities to publish and deploy high-impact systems in a fast-moving startup.

Qualifications

• PhD in artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer science or closely related discipline, or equivalent evidence of research achievement.
• Outstanding record of original contributions to AI research.
• Ability to formulate, implement and evaluate novel AI methods or architectures.
• Broad understanding across modern AI, including language models, learning, reasoning and knowledge representation.
• Excellent scientific and engineering judgement and intellectual independence.
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Define and lead research projects and programmes in artificial intelligence.
• Formulate new AI architectures, learning algorithms and evaluation methodologies.
• Identify high-value research opportunities and translate them into executable programmes of work.
• Design AI systems that combine language models, reasoning and knowledge identification, representation, understanding and use.
• Develop novel approaches to large-scale content evaluation and knowledge representation.
• Lead experimental design and interpretation.
• Mentor and collaborate with research engineers and contribute to the scientific development of the team.
• Communicate results through technical reports and publications in leading AI venues.

Skills

Scientific judgement

Communication skills

Independent thinker

Research leadership

Education

PhD in AI/ML/CS

Equivalent research evidence

Job description

About Primary

Far too few of the world's best journalists get the recognition, audience, or rewards their work deserves. Primary is building the infrastructure to change that. Primary Index is the first AI-native ranking system for journalism — the credibility standard for news in the AI economy. We evaluate individual journalists on the accuracy, depth, and craft of their published work through a purpose-built AI operating against a transparent, published methodology. Building an AI system that can faithfully assess factuality, evidence quality, source reliability, and editorial balance at scale — faithfully enough to earn the trust of journalists and the public — is a genuinely hard problem that requires new methods, not the application of existing ones. That is the work of this team.

We are seeking an exceptional Research Scientist to help define and lead the next generation of AI systems for automated knowledge acquisition, reasoning and evaluation.

Working closely with the Chief Scientist and other senior leaders, you will help shape the scientific direction of the Primary’s AI research. You will be expected not only to implement and evaluate novel AI methods, but also to formulate new research questions, design new AI architectures, and identify opportunities to materially advance the state of the art.

Current research programmes include:

• large-scale evaluation and scoring of published journalism;

• AI systems that assess factuality, neutrality, evidence quality and source reliability;

• high-throughput local inference over very large text collections;

• adaptation and fine-tuning of open-weight language models;

• knowledge representation and reasoning for AI systems;

• new methods for evaluating, aligning and improving AI systems.

Overview

This is a research leadership role, not a management role. AI-assisted software development is expected and encouraged. The emphasis is on scientific judgement, creativity and technical leadership rather than expertise with particular implementation frameworks.

We value intellectual independence and ambition within a team. We are looking for researchers who enjoy identifying important unsolved problems, developing original approaches, and critically evaluating competing hypotheses, leading to scaled, deployed, high-impact systems. The ability to formulate new research directions and lead them to successful outcomes is more important than experience with any particular software framework.

Responsibilities

You will:

• define and lead research projects and programmes in artificial intelligence;
• formulate new AI architectures, learning algorithms and evaluation methodologies;
• identify high-value research opportunities and translate them into executable programmes of work;
• design AI systems that combine language models, reasoning and knowledge identification, representation, understanding and use;
• develop novel approaches to large-scale content evaluation and knowledge representation;
• lead experimental design and interpretation;
• effectively employ and critically evaluate AI-based software development tools;
• mentor and collaborate with research engineers and contribute to the scientific development of the team;
• communicate results through technical reports and publications in leading AI venues.

Essential qualifications

You should demonstrate:

• a PhD in artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer science or a very closely related discipline, or equivalent evidence of research achievement;
• an outstanding record of original contributions to AI research;
• demonstrated ability to formulate, implement and evaluate novel AI methods or architectures;
• broad understanding across modern AI, including language models, learning, reasoning and knowledge representation;
• excellent scientific and engineering judgement and intellectual independence;
• outstanding written and verbal communication skills.

Evidence of suitability

Evidence of suitability includes one or more of:

• first-author publications introducing new AI methods, architectures or learning algorithms;
• substantial contributions to influential AI research programmes;
• demonstrated leadership of ambitious AI research projects;
• widely used research software or open-source AI systems;
• evidence that your work has influenced subsequent AI research or practice.

What will distinguish outstanding candidates

Outstanding candidates will be able to take a broad objective—for example,

“Design an AI system that autonomously evaluates the evidentiary quality of published journalism at scale, identifies patterns of rigor and deficiency across large corpora, and continuously improves its scoring methodology through experience.”

—and independently:

• formulate the underlying scientific questions;
• identify the key technical obstacles;
• propose multiple architectural alternatives;
• determine appropriate learning objectives and evaluation methodologies;
• design and lead an effective research programme;
• produce AI systems that materially advance the state of the art.

Research environment

You will work with experienced AI researchers in an ambitious, high-velocity startup focused on advancing the foundations of AI, knowledge use, and trustworthiness. Our objective is to build AI systems that materially advance the state of the art while rapidly delivering real-world impact. Successful work is expected to result in both deployment in production systems and publication at leading AI conferences and journals.

The successful candidate will be expected to become a scientific leader within the company, contributing to long-term research strategy as well as hands-on technical innovation.

Compensation & Structure

• Compensation: $200,000+ cash compensation plus generous equity package, depending on experience and seniority
• New York City–based role, working in person with the research team
• Meaningful equity grants and an annual performance bonus
• Comprehensive benefits, including health, dental, and vision
• We will calibrate seniority and scope to the right candidate