402 Research Scientist jobs in the United States

Summary

At Imbue, we believe technology should be human-centered. In this role, you’ll work with other scientists and engineers to build collaborative agentic products that help people build software. We’re looking for impact-oriented people who want to help invent a new paradigm of programming using AI agents, with a focus on improving code output and the oversight of agents and software.

Research Areas of Interest

1. RL methods for LLMs
2. Code verification, including techniques such as test generation and LLM-as-a-judge
3. Reasoning agents
4. Synthetic data generation

You Will

1. Lead research initiatives in AI-assisted software development, from zero to one.
2. Able to create research questions that clarify the nature of the problem being solved, and coordinate a research program to successfully answer those questions.
3. Extremely comfortable running ML experiments.
4. Able to clearly communicate about your ideas and intuitions.
5. Excited to mentor a small team of great research engineers.

You Have

1. A track record of high-quality papers, open-source projects, or equivalent accomplishments in industry.
2. Experience with empirical research, with the ability to craft and execute on research projects that solve algorithmic and engineering problems.
3. Great intuition with the ability to identify promising areas and avoid dead ends.
4. A preference for fast, collaborative research efforts.
5. 5+ years ML coding and/or research experience.

Compensation and Benefits

1. Generous compensation, equity, and benefits.
2. Actively co-create and participate in a positive, intentional team culture.
3. Frequent team events, dinners, off-sites, and hanging out.
4. $20K+ yearly budget for self-improvement: coaching, courses, conferences, etc.
5. Compensation packages are highly variable based on a variety of factors. If your salary requirements fall outside of the stated range, we still encourage you to apply. The range for this role is $50,000–$5 0,000 cash, 1M- 5M in equity.

How to apply

All submissions are reviewed by a person, so we encourage you to include a cover letter. If you have any other work that you can showcase (specific publications, open source code, side projects, etc.), you should certainly include it!

We try to reply either way within a week or two at most (usually much sooner).

We know that talent comes from many backgrounds, and with many different skills and preferences. That’s why we have a hiring process that gives you the ability to showcase yourself in a variety of different ways, depending on what feels best for you.

Learn more about our full interview process here.

About us

Imbue builds AI systems that reason and code, enabling AI agents to accomplish larger goals and safely work in the real world. By using these agents extensively, we gain insights into improving both the capabilities of the underlying models and the interaction design for agents.

We aim to rekindle the dream of the personal computer, where computers become truly intelligent tools that empower us, giving us freedom, dignity, and agency to pursue the things we love.

Research Scientist / Machine Learning Scientist

Location:SF Bay Area/Hybrid / Remote

Type:Full-Time

About the Role:

The Clientis seeking a variety of Machine Learning Scientist to help advance how we evaluate and understand AI models. You’ll help design and analyze experiments that uncover what makes models useful, trustworthy and capable through human preference signals. Your work will contribute to the scientific foundations of understanding AI at scale.

This role is deeply interdisciplinary. You’ll work closely with engineers, product teams, marketing and the broader research community to develop new methods for comparing models, analyzing preference data, and disentangling performance factors like style, reasoning, and robustness. Your work will inform both the public leaderboard and the tools we provide to model developers.

If you’re excited by open-ended questions, rigorous evaluation, and research that’s grounded in real-world impact, you’ll find a meaningful home here. We’re looking for:

• Hands-on experience training large-scale models, including reward models, preference models, and fine-tuning LLMs with methods like RLHF, DPO, and contrastive learning.

• Strong foundation in ML and statistics, with a track record of designing novel training objectives, evaluation schemes, or statistical frameworks to improve model reliability and alignment.

• Fluent in the full experimental stack, from dataset design and large-batch training to rigorous evaluation and ablation, with an eye for what scales to production.

• Deeply collaborative mindset, working closely with engineers to productionize research insights and iterating with product teams to align modeling goals with user needs.

Responsibilities:

• Design and conduct experiments to evaluate AI model behavior across reasoning, style, robustness, and user preference dimensions

• Develop new metrics, methodologies, and evaluation protocols that go beyond traditional benchmarks

• Analyze large-scale human voting and interaction data to uncover insights into model performance and user preferences

• Collaborate with engineers to implement and scale research findings into production systems

• Prototype and test research ideas rapidly, balancing rigor with iteration speed

• Author internal reports and external publications that contribute to the broader ML research community

• Partner with model providers to shape evaluation questions and support responsible model testing

• Contribute to the scientific integrity and transparency of theThe Clientleaderboard and tools

Who isThe Client?

Created by researchers from UC Berkeley’s SkyLab ,The Clientis an open platform where everyone can easily access, explore and interact with the world’s leading AI models. By comparing them side by side and casting votes for the better response, the community helps shape a public leaderboard, making AI progress more transparent, and grounded in real-world usage.

Why Join Us?

Trusted by organizations likeGoogle,OpenAI,Meta, xAI, and more,The Clientis rapidly becoming essential infrastructure for transparent, human-centered AI evaluation at scale. With over one million monthly users and growing developer adoption, our impact is helping guide the next generation of safe, aligned AI systems—grounded in open access and collective feedback.

Our work is regularly referenced by industry leaders pushing the frontier of safe and reliable AI. Sundar Pichai , Jeff Dean , Elon Musk , and Sam Altman .

• High Impact: Your work will be used daily by the world’s most advanced AI labs.

• Global Reach: Develop data infrastructure powering millions of real-world evaluations, influencing AI reliability across industries at the top-tier

• Exceptional Team: We are a small team of top talent fromGoogle, DeepMind, Discord,Vercel,UC Berkeley, andStanford.

Requirements:

• PhD or equivalent research experience in Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Statistics, or a related field

• Strong understanding of LLMs and modern deep learning architectures (e.g., Transformers, diffusion models, reinforcement learning with human feedback)
Proficiency in Python and ML research libraries such as PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow

• Demonstrated ability to design and analyze experiments with statistical rigor

• Experience publishing research or working on open-source projects in ML, NLP, or AI evaluation

• Comfortable working with real-world usage data and designing metrics beyond standard benchmarks

• Ability to translate research questions into practical systems and collaborate across engineering and product teams

• Passion for open science, reproducibility, and community-driven research

What we offer:

• The cash compensation for this position has not yet been finalized. Actual compensation will depend on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and candidate location.

• Competitive salary and meaningful equity

• Comprehensive healthcare coverage (medical, dental, vision)

• The opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI with a small, mission-driven team

• A culture that values transparency, trust, and community impact

Come help build the space where anyone can explore and help shape the future of AI.

Hedra is a pioneering generative media company backed by top investors at Index, A16Z, and Abstract Ventures. We're building Hedra Studio, a multimodal creation platform capable of control, emotion, and creative intelligence.

At the core of Hedra Studio is our Character-3 foundation model, the first omnimodal model in production. Character-3 jointly reasons across image, text, and audio for more intelligent video generation — it’s the next evolution of AI-driven content creation.

Note: At Hedra, we’re a team of hard-working, passionate individuals seeking to fundamentally change content and build a generational company together. You should have start-up experience and be a self-starter that is driven to build impactful products that change the status quo. The Hedra team is fully in-person in SF/NY with a shared love of solving hard problems using whiteboards.

We are seeking a highly motivated Research Scientist to join our team and drive innovation in video generation and AI agents using 3D Variational Auto-encoders (3DVAE) and video diffusion models. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in machine learning, particularly in generative models, and a passion for pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in AI.

• Conduct cutting-edge research in video generation and AI agents, focusing on developing new architectures and algorithms for 3DVAE and video diffusion models.

• Collaborate with the team to integrate research findings into practical applications, ensuring models are suitable for deployment.

• Stay up-to-date with the latest developments in the field, such as advancements in diffusion models for video, and identify opportunities for innovation.

• Present research findings and results to the team and stakeholders, potentially contributing to publications in top-tier conferences or journals.

• PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field, with a focus on generative models.

• Extensive knowledge of deep learning, particularly VAEs and diffusion models, with experience in 3D data processing and representation,

• Proficiency in programming languages like Python, and familiarity with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow, essential for model development.

• Strong communication and collaboration skills, given the need to work with diverse teams and present complex research.

• A track record of publications in top-tier conferences or journals is a plus, reflecting research impact.

This role is critical for advancing the state of the art, with a focus on developing new methods rather than applying existing ones, aligning with the startup’s innovative goals.

• Competitive compensation and equity

• 401k (no match)

• Healthcare (Silver PPO Medical, Vision, Dental)

• Lunch and snacks at the office

We encourage you to apply even if you don't fully meet all the listed requirements; we value potential and diverse perspectives, and your unique skills could be a great asset to our team.

By applying to this role, you will be considered for Research Scientist roles across all teams at OpenAI.

About the Role

As a Research Scientist here, you will develop innovative machine learning techniques and advance the research agenda of the team you work on, while also collaborating with peers across the organization. We are looking for people who want to discover simple, generalizable ideas that work well even at large scale, and form part of a broader research vision that unifies the entire company.

We expect you to:

• Have a track record of coming up with new ideas or improving upon existing ideas in machine learning, demonstrated by accomplishments such as first author publications or projects

• Possess the ability to own and pursue a research agenda, including choosing impactful research problems and autonomously carrying out long-running projects

• Be excited about OpenAI’s approach to research

Nice to have:

• Interested in and thoughtful about the impacts of AI technology

• Past experience in creating high-performance implementations of deep learning algorithms

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement .

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link .

OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy

At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

We are looking for an advanced physicist to join our team to train AI models. You will measure the progress of these AI chatbots, evaluate their logic, and solve problems to improve the quality of each model.

In this role you will need to hold an expert understanding of physics- a completed or in progress Masters/PhD is preferred but not required. Other related fields include, but are not limited to: Astrophysics, Biophysics, Electrical Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Mathematics.

Benefits:

• This is a full-time or part-time REMOTE position
• You’ll be able to choose which projects you want to work on
• You can work on your own schedule
• Projects are paid hourly starting at $40+ per hour, with bonuses on high-quality and high-volume work

Responsibilities:

• Give AI chatbots diverse and complex physics problems and evaluate their outputs
• Evaluate the quality produced by AI models for correctness and performance

Qualifications:

• Fluency in English (native or bilingual level)
• Detail-oriented
• Proficient in mathematics, inductive/deductive reasoning, physical/temporal/ spatial reasoning
• A current, in progress, or completed Masters and/or PhD is preferred but not required

Note: Payment is made via PayPal. We will never ask for any money from you. PayPal will handle any currency conversions from USD. This job is only available to those in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. Those located outside of these countries will not see work or assessments available on our site at this time.

We are looking for an advanced physicist to join our team to train AI models. You will measure the progress of these AI chatbots, evaluate their logic, and solve problems to improve the quality of each model.

In this role you will need to hold an expert understanding of physics- a completed or in progress Masters/PhD is preferred but not required. Other related fields include, but are not limited to: Astrophysics, Biophysics, Electrical Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Mathematics.

Benefits:

• This is a full-time or part-time REMOTE position
• You’ll be able to choose which projects you want to work on
• You can work on your own schedule
• Projects are paid hourly starting at $40+ per hour, with bonuses on high-quality and high-volume work

Responsibilities:

• Give AI chatbots diverse and complex physics problems and evaluate their outputs
• Evaluate the quality produced by AI models for correctness and performance

Qualifications:

• Fluency in English (native or bilingual level)
• Detail-oriented
• Proficient in mathematics, inductive/deductive reasoning, physical/temporal/ spatial reasoning
• A current, in progress, or completed Masters and/or PhD is preferred but not required

Note: Payment is made via PayPal. We will never ask for any money from you. PayPal will handle any currency conversions from USD. This job is only available to those in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. Those located outside of these countries will not see work or assessments available on our site at this time.

We are looking for an advanced physicist to join our team to train AI models. You will measure the progress of these AI chatbots, evaluate their logic, and solve problems to improve the quality of each model.

In this role you will need to hold an expert understanding of physics- a completed or in progress Masters/PhD is preferred but not required. Other related fields include, but are not limited to: Astrophysics, Biophysics, Electrical Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Mathematics.

Benefits:

• This is a full-time or part-time REMOTE position
• You’ll be able to choose which projects you want to work on
• You can work on your own schedule
• Projects are paid hourly starting at $40+ per hour, with bonuses on high-quality and high-volume work

Responsibilities:

• Give AI chatbots diverse and complex physics problems and evaluate their outputs
• Evaluate the quality produced by AI models for correctness and performance

Qualifications:

• Fluency in English (native or bilingual level)
• Detail-oriented
• Proficient in mathematics, inductive/deductive reasoning, physical/temporal/ spatial reasoning
• A current, in progress, or completed Masters and/or PhD is preferred but not required

Note: Payment is made via PayPal. We will never ask for any money from you. PayPal will handle any currency conversions from USD. This job is only available to those in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. Those located outside of these countries will not see work or assessments available on our site at this time.

We are looking for an advanced physicist to join our team to train AI models. You will measure the progress of these AI chatbots, evaluate their logic, and solve problems to improve the quality of each model.

In this role you will need to hold an expert understanding of physics- a completed or in progress Masters/PhD is preferred but not required. Other related fields include, but are not limited to: Astrophysics, Biophysics, Electrical Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Mathematics.

Benefits:

• This is a full-time or part-time REMOTE position
• You’ll be able to choose which projects you want to work on
• You can work on your own schedule
• Projects are paid hourly starting at $40+ per hour, with bonuses on high-quality and high-volume work

Responsibilities:

• Give AI chatbots diverse and complex physics problems and evaluate their outputs
• Evaluate the quality produced by AI models for correctness and performance

Qualifications:

• Fluency in English (native or bilingual level)
• Detail-oriented
• Proficient in mathematics, inductive/deductive reasoning, physical/temporal/ spatial reasoning
• A current, in progress, or completed Masters and/or PhD is preferred but not required

Note: Payment is made via PayPal. We will never ask for any money from you. PayPal will handle any currency conversions from USD. This job is only available to those in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. Those located outside of these countries will not see work or assessments available on our site at this time.

We are looking for an advanced physicist to join our team to train AI models. You will measure the progress of these AI chatbots, evaluate their logic, and solve problems to improve the quality of each model.

In this role you will need to hold an expert understanding of physics- a completed or in progress Masters/PhD is preferred but not required. Other related fields include, but are not limited to: Astrophysics, Biophysics, Electrical Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Mathematics.

Benefits:

• This is a full-time or part-time REMOTE position
• You’ll be able to choose which projects you want to work on
• You can work on your own schedule
• Projects are paid hourly starting at $40+ per hour, with bonuses on high-quality and high-volume work

Responsibilities:

• Give AI chatbots diverse and complex physics problems and evaluate their outputs
• Evaluate the quality produced by AI models for correctness and performance

Qualifications:

• Fluency in English (native or bilingual level)
• Detail-oriented
• Proficient in mathematics, inductive/deductive reasoning, physical/temporal/ spatial reasoning
• A current, in progress, or completed Masters and/or PhD is preferred but not required

Note: Payment is made via PayPal. We will never ask for any money from you. PayPal will handle any currency conversions from USD. This job is only available to those in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. Those located outside of these countries will not see work or assessments available on our site at this time.