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Research Engineer

Clera
Posted 2 days ago, valid for 10 days
Location

San Francisco, CA, US

Salary

$150,000 - $250,000 per year

Contract type

Full Time

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Sonic Summary

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  • This Research Engineer position is at an early-stage AI infrastructure startup focused on building systems for training and evaluating frontier AI agents.
  • Candidates should have 2–4 years of professional experience in a similar role, with a strong proficiency in Python, Docker, and Linux environments.
  • Responsibilities include designing experiments, developing internal tools, and improving data quality for AI training processes.
  • The salary range for this role is between $150,000 and $250,000 USD annually, with visa sponsorship available.
  • The position is on-site in San Francisco, CA, but candidates based in Singapore will also be considered.

About the Role

This is a Research Engineer role at an early-stage AI infrastructure startup building the technical foundation for training and evaluating frontier AI agents. You'll work across QC automation, benchmarks, and synthetic data — sitting at the intersection of research and engineering to shape how agents learn and improve. The work is high-impact and highly ambiguous, with direct influence on the direction of the platform.

What You'll Do

  • Build systems for creating new environments, improving data quality, and translating real-world workflows into tasks and benchmarks.

  • Design and run experiments to understand model behavior, agent failure modes, and data quality issues.

  • Develop internal tools that help researchers, engineers, and data vendors produce higher-quality tasks, trajectories, and feedback loops.

  • Work across the full lifecycle of agent training data — from task design and environment setup through trajectory collection, evaluation, and validation.

  • Partner with external vendors to identify bottlenecks and improve the quality and throughput of the data engine.

  • Build metrics and analyses to assess whether tasks, environments, and evals are genuinely useful for training frontier agents.

What We're Looking For

  • 2–4 years of professional experience as a Research Engineer or in a similar role delivering systems for AI agent training and evaluation.

  • Strong proficiency in Python, Docker, and Linux environments.

  • Hands-on experience with benchmarks and evaluations for RL training, including reasoning about task realism, rubric reliability, environment usability, and trajectory quality.

  • Proven ability to build tools, pipelines, and research infrastructure with minimal guidance in early-stage settings.

  • Experience designing experiments, metrics, and validation workflows to understand model and data quality.

  • Comfort operating in fast-paced, unstructured environments and communicating clearly across time zones.

  • Strong quantitative or technical foundation — demonstrated through competitive programming, academic research, or strong independent project work.

Compensation & Benefits

Salary range: $150,000 – $250,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is available.

Location

On-site in San Francisco, CA, USA. Candidates based in Singapore are also considered.




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