Staff Applied AI Researcher: Agentic Search

Tavily; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Tavily is seeking a Staff Applied AI Researcher to help build an agent-native search platform—an AI-driven layer over the web for agents. You will own portions of the search stack, including ranking or iterative retrieval, and drive real-world impact from research to production.

The role emphasizes designing scalable retrieval architectures, grounding LLMs in live web data, and excelling in a fast-paced, ownership-driven environment. This is a high-responsibility position in the US.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of applied AI, ML, or software engineering experience.
• Track record shipping ML/AI systems to production at scale.
• Expertise in search, retrieval, ranking or RAG-based assistants.
• Deep learning knowledge, esp. transformers and embeddings.
• Experience with LLM-integrated or knowledge-intensive systems.
• Ability to design ML evaluation frameworks and metrics.
• Strong Python programming skills.
• Publications in top venues (ICLR/ICML/NeurIPS/AAAI/EMNLP/ACL).
• High ownership in a fast-moving, product-driven environment.

Responsibilities

• Design an agent-native search system supporting low-latency single-hop and iterative deep search tasks.
• Train ranking and retrieval models for agent-driven workflows under real-world constraints.
• Bridge research to production by shipping advances to the stack.
• Develop multi-stage retrieval architectures and iteration over retrieval.
• Lead experimentation on modern retrieval approaches and productionize them.
• Ground LLMs in real-time web data using reliability signals.
• Define metrics for agentic systems and collaborate with engineers to deploy at web scale.
• Mentor researchers and engineers to raise technical standards.

Skills

8+ years experience

Shipping ML systems

Search/ranking/retrieval

Deep learning (transformers)

LLM-integrated systems

Evaluation frameworks

Python programming

Top-tier publications

Autonomy in product environment

Job description

Tavily is seeking a Staff Applied AI Researcher to help build an agent-native search platform—an AI-driven layer over the web for agents. You will own portions of the search stack, including ranking or iterative retrieval, and drive real-world impact from research to production.

The role emphasizes designing scalable retrieval architectures, grounding LLMs in live web data, and excelling in a fast-paced, ownership-driven environment. This is a high-responsibility position in the US.