💼 About This Role

You'll define and pursue a research agenda spanning pure and applied post-training methodology for frontier AI models. Your work will directly influence production inference systems at companies like Cursor and Notion, with a third of your time dedicated to open problems. This role offers a unique blend of deep research and real-world impact at a company building the platform engineers use to ship AI products.

🎯 What You'll Do

• Define and pursue a research agenda spanning pure and applied work
• Design and execute rigorous experiments at meaningful scale
• Publish at top venues and establish Baseten's research presence
• Collaborate with model performance and training infrastructure teams
• Mentor junior researchers and shape technical direction

📋 Requirements

• PhD or equivalent research depth in machine learning
• First-author publications at top venues like NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR
• Ability to move from theory through implementation to empirical results
• Willingness to operate in a startup environment with product-informed research

✨ Nice to Have

• Experience with production ML systems and deployment constraints
• Background spanning multiple research areas (e.g., interpretability and RL)
• Track record of open-source contributions in ML research

🎁 Benefits & Perks

• 🏖️ Flexible PTO including company-wide Winter Break
• 🩺 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 👶 Paid parental leave and fertility stipend through Carrot
• 💰 Company-facilitated 401(k)
• 📈 Meaningful equity and competitive compensation