Senior / Staff Machine Learning Research Scientist, Agents

Scale AI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 200,800 - 251,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive health coverage

Generous PTO

Learning and development stipend

Equity compensation

Commuter stipend

Job summary

Scale AI in San Francisco is seeking an AI Researcher focused on advancing intelligent agents through data strategy and research publications. This role requires expertise in LLMs and planning algorithms, with a strong emphasis on converting innovative ideas into scalable solutions. Candidates should have at least three years experience in machine learning, familiarity with frameworks like Pytorch or Jax, and excellent communication skills. The position offers a competitive salary range of $200,800 – $251,000, along with equity and robust benefits.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in sophisticated ML problems.
• Ability to turn research ideas into prototypes.
• Experience with creating evaluations and benchmarks for AI agents.

Responsibilities

• Explore data landscape for building AI agents.
• Guide data strategy to drive innovation.
• Collaborate with customer researchers and engineering teams.

Skills

Experience with LLMs

Proficiency in Pytorch, Jax, Tensorflow

Published research in ML venues

Strong communication skills

Experience in product development

Tools

AWS or GCP

OpenHands

LangGraph

Job description

About Scale

At Scale AI, our mission is to accelerate the development of AI applications. For 8 years, Scale has been the leading AI data foundry, helping fuel the most exciting advancements in AI, including generative AI, defense applications, and autonomous vehicles. With our recent Series F round, we’re accelerating the abundance of frontier data to pave the road to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and building upon our prior model evaluation work with enterprise customers and governments, to deepen our capabilities and offerings for both public and private evaluations.

About This Role

This role is at the intersection of cutting‑edge AI research and practical application, with a focus on studying the data types essential for building state‑of‑the‑art agents, such as browser and SWE agents. The ideal candidate will explore the data landscape needed to advance intelligent, adaptable AI agents, guiding the data strategy at Scale to drive innovation. This position requires not only expertise in LLM agents and planning algorithms but also creativity in addressing novel challenges related to data, interaction, and evaluation. You will contribute to impactful research publications on agents, collaborate with customer researchers, and work alongside the engineering team to translate these advancements into real‑world, scalable solutions.

Ideally you’d have:

• Practical experience working with LLMs, with proficiency in frameworks like Pytorch, Jax, or Tensorflow. You should also be adept at interpreting research literature and quickly turning new ideas into prototypes.
• A track record of published research in top ML venues (e.g., ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, COLM, etc.)
• At least three years of experience addressing sophisticated ML problems, either in a research setting or product development.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills and the ability to operate cross‑functionally.

Nice to have:

• Hands‑on experience with open source LLM fine‑tuning or involvement in bespoke LLM fine‑tuning projects using Pytorch/Jax.
• Hands‑on experience and publications in building evaluations and benchmarks related to AI agents such as tool‑use, text2SQL, browser agents, coding agents and GUI agents.
• Hands‑on experience with agent frameworks such as OpenHands, Swarm, LangGraph, etc.
• Familiarity with agentic reasoning methods such as STaR and PLANSEARCH
• Experience working with cloud technology stack (eg. AWS or GCP) and developing machine learning models in a cloud environment.

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.

Compensation: 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. You’ll also receive benefits including 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. Salary Range: $200,800 – $251,000 USD (San Francisco, New York, Seattle).

We believe that everyone should be able to bring their whole selves to work, which is why we are proud to be an affirmative action employer and 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]. We comply with the United States Department of Labor's Pay Transparency provision.