Research Engineer

FAR.AI Research Engineer

FAR.AI is a non-profit AI research institute working to ensure advanced AI is safe and beneficial for everyone. Our mission is to facilitate breakthrough AI safety research, advance global understanding of AI risks and solutions, and foster a coordinated global response.

We organize our team as Members of Technical Staff, with significant overlap between scientist and engineer roles. As an engineer, you will develop scalable implementations of machine learning algorithms and use them to run scientific experiments. You can contribute to open source codebases such as Pytorch, Hugging Face Transformers and Accelerate. You will receive engineering mentorship via code review, pair programming and regular 1-to-1s.

Alongside the scientists, you will be involved in the write-up of results and credited as an author in papers.

You are encouraged to develop your research taste, proposing novel directions and joining a research pod which suits your interests. You are welcome to take time to study and to attend conferences free of charge. Our technical team is organized into research pods to enable continuity of organizational structure whilst each pod can pivot through varied research projects.

It is essential that you:

• Have significant software engineering experience or experience applying machine learning methods. Evidence of this may include prior work experience, open-source contributions, or academic publications.
• Have experience with at least one object-oriented programming language (preferably Python).
• Are results-oriented and motivated by impactful research.

It is preferable that you have experience with some of the following:

• Common ML frameworks like PyTorch or Tensor Flow.
• Natural language processing or reinforcement learning.
• Operating system internals and distributed systems.
• Publications or open-source software contributions.
• Basic linear algebra, calculus, probability, and statistics.

We encourage applications from strong software engineers who are new to ML, and from academics without industrial experience in software engineering.

If based in the USA or Singapore, you will be an employee of FAR.AI (501(c)(3) research non-profit / non-profit CLG). Outside the USA or Singapore, you will be employed via an EOR organisation on behalf of FAR.AI or as a contractor.

• Location:
  
  Both remote and in-person (Berkeley, CA or Singapore) are possible. We sponsor visas for in-person employees, and can hire remotely in most countries.
• Hours:
  
  Full-time (40 hours/week).
• Compensation: $100,000-$190,000/year depending on experience and location. We will also pay for work-related travel and equipment expenses. We offer catered lunch and dinner at our offices in Berkeley.
• Application process:
  
  A 72-minute programming assessment, two interviews with members of our technical staff, and a paid work trial lasting up to 1 week. If you are not available for a work trial we may be able to find alternative ways of testing your fit.

If you have any questions about the role, please do get in touch erwise, if you don't have questions, the best way to ensure a proper review of your skills and qualifications is by applying directly via the application form. Please don't email us to share your resume (it won't have any impact on our decision). Thank you!