Applied Methods
~The MetaResearch & ScienceResearch Engineer

Research Engineer

Research Engineers at these organizations work across the full stack—from implementing cutting-edge algorithms and optimizing models for specialized hardware, to building scalable infrastructure that translates research prototypes into production systems. They combine deep machine learning expertise with strong software engineering skills, often bridging gaps between research scientists and infrastructure teams to accelerate progress on frontier AI problems like inference optimization, reinforcement learning for robotics and reasoning, multimodal generation, and agentic systems. These roles typically sit within research teams that collaborate closely with product and infrastructure groups, requiring engineers to balance scientific rigor with practical engineering constraints while contributing to publications and deployments that advance the field.

$ titles --canonical
Research EngineerSenior Research EngineerStaff Research EngineerML Research EngineerAI Research Engineer
Open Jobs118
Companies Hiring45
$02

Skills

What companies are looking for in this role.

$ skills --core

Designing and implementing machine learning model architectures for specialized domains

95%

Building scalable data pipelines for ingestion, filtering, deduplication, and quality assessment

92%

Developing evaluation frameworks and benchmarks to measure model capabilities

90%

Designing and running end-to-end experiments with rigorous methodology

88%

Training and fine-tuning large-scale machine learning models

88%

Translating research ideas into scalable, deployable systems

87%

Building production-grade infrastructure for model training and inference

85%

Profiling and optimizing model performance across different hardware targets

85%

Building data quality metrics and curation strategies for domain-specific applications

84%

Conducting ablation studies and diagnostic analysis of model behavior

83%

Designing and curating evaluation datasets with statistical rigor

82%

Implementing model compression techniques for efficient deployment

82%

Analyzing and diagnosing failure modes in deployed systems

80%

Working with real-world hardware systems and deployment constraints

78%

Implementing reinforcement learning and preference-based training approaches

75%

Working across hardware, systems, and research domains simultaneously

72%

Correlating pre-training metrics with downstream system-level performance

70%

Developing methods for few-shot adaptation and transfer learning

70%

Architecting bioinformatics and data analysis systems at scale

55%
$ skills --emerging

Designing agentic systems that combine multiple models and tools

72%
$ skills --soft

Collaborating with cross-functional teams including researchers, engineers, and domain experts

90%

Defining technical direction and research strategy independently

68%

Establishing best practices for code review, testing, and continuous integration

68%

Publishing research findings at top-tier academic venues

65%

Mentoring junior scientists and fostering research culture

60%
$03

Technology

The tools and technologies that define this role.

$ tech --language
Pythonvery high
$ tech --framework
PyTorchvery high
Transformershigh
JAXmoderate
TensorFlowmoderate
Vision Transformersmoderate
Vision-language modelsmoderate
$ tech --platform
Claudemoderate
Kubernetesmoderate
Linuxmoderate
Apache Sparklow
GPTlow
Jetsonlow
$ tech --tool
CUDAhigh
Dockermoderate
Gitmoderate
TensorRTmoderate
AlphaFoldlow
Apache Airflowlow
XLA/MLIRlow
$ tech --concept
Distributed training systemshigh
Knowledge distillationhigh
Model compressionhigh
Pruninghigh
Quantizationhigh
Reinforcement Learninghigh
Roboticshigh
Autonomous drivingmoderate
Behavior cloningmoderate
Computer visionmoderate
Diffusion modelsmoderate
Direct Preference Optimization (DPO)moderate
Imitation learningmoderate
Sim-to-real transfermoderate
Synthetic data generationmoderate
Video understandingmoderate
Automatic speech recognitionlow
Early exitlow
NGS analysislow
Speculative decodinglow
Speech synthesislow
$04

Open Jobs

118 open Research Engineer jobs across 45 companies.

Anthropic2d
Research Engineer, Model Evaluations
Remote-Friendly (Travel-Required) | San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY·Research & Science
OpenAI3d
Research Engineer / Research Scientist - Personal AGI, Personality and Model Behavior
San Francisco·Research & Science
Exa4d
Research Engineer, Generalist
San Francisco, California·Research & Science
Anthropic1w
Research Engineer, Life Sciences
San Francisco, CA·Research & Science
Isomorphic Labs1w
Bioinformatics Engineer, London
London·Research & Science
Pika1w
Research Scientist, Data
Palo Alto HQ·Research & Science
Helsing1w
AI Research Engineer - 3D Computer Vision
Berlin; London; Munich; Paris·Research & Science
Anthropic1w
Research Engineer, Computer Use
San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY | Seattle, WA·Research & Science
Advanced Machine Intelligence1w
AMI Engineer - Singapore
Paris·Research & Science
Advanced Machine Intelligence1w
AMI Engineer - Paris
Paris·Research & Science
Black Forest Labs1w
Member of Technical Staff - Research Engineer
San Francisco (USA), Freiburg (Germany)·Research & Science
Databricks2w
Staff Research Engineer, Data Agents
San Francisco, California·Research & Science
Harvey2w
Research Engineer, Post-Training
San Francisco·Research & Science
Anthropic2w
Research Engineer, Visual Knowledge Work
New York City, NY; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA·Research & Science
Cohere2w
Senior Research Engineer - Safety Tooling and Data
New York·Research & Science
OpenAI2w
Research Engineer / Research Scientist -Personal AGI, Proactivity
San Francisco·Research & Science
OpenAI2w
Research Engineer/Research Scientist - Personal AGI, North Stars
San Francisco·Research & Science
Anthropic2w
Research Engineer, Rule of Law
San Francisco, CA·Research & Science
Waymo2w
Staff Machine Learning Engineer
London, UK·Research & Science
Lovable2w
Research Engineering Lead
Stockholm·Research & Science