Research Software Engineer, Post Training

About the Role

This role is responsible for building and strengthening the engineering foundations that our post-training research teams depend on. You'll embed within a research team, and build or improve the systems required for the team to succeed. Our research teams are small, and the role carries a corresponding degree of autonomy and responsibility.

What You’ll Do

• Embed within a research team to build, harden, and improve the systems and infrastructure required for the team to succeed.
• Design, build, and operate infrastructure research teams depend on, including RL training systems, sandboxing, data pipelines, and agent scaffolding.

Minimum qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Physics, Mathematics, or a related discipline with strong theoretical and empirical grounding.
• Experience leading projects end to end, working in large fast-moving codebases, and writing code others have depended and built on.
• Strong proficiency in Python and strong engineering fundamentals, with experience debugging systems that fail intermittently and at scale.
• Clarity in communication, an ability to explain complex technical concepts in writing.
• Strong autonomous drive to progress towards the team’s goals with an ownership mindset.

Additional information

Preferred qualifications - we encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet all preferred qualifications, but preferably some:

• Experience building or iterating with sandboxed or containerized execution environments at a large scale.
• Experience in a role where the team's priorities set yours, and a track record of success in such a role.
• Familiarity with at least one deep learning framework (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX).

Logistics

• Location: This role is based in San Francisco, California.
• Compensation: Depending on background, skills and experience, the expected annual salary range for this position is $350,000 - $475,000 USD.
• Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas. While we can't guarantee success for every candidate or role, if you're the right fit, we're committed to working through the visa process together.
• Benefits: Thinking Machines offers generous health, dental, and vision benefits, unlimited PTO, paid parental leave, and relocation support as needed.