Principal Applied AI Researcher - Domain- Models; Dublin, CA

Principal Research Scientist

Articul8 AI is seeking a Principal Research Scientist to define how we build, evaluate, and scale domain-specific models as a durable source of competitive advantage. You will lead research across the full model development lifecycle: domain data strategy, continued pre-training, supervised fine-tuning, post-training, evaluation methodology, and the strategic decisions that determine where Articul8 can create and sustain model superiority in the market.

Responsibilities:

• Set company-level technical direction for domain-specific model strategy — define how Articul8 builds, evaluates, scales, and sustains model superiority across continued pre-training, fine-tuning, post-training, and release quality standards, leveraging massively parallel agentic AI systems to compress strategic exploration cycles from months to days
• Architect the agentic model development paradigm for the organization — design the agent-orchestrated research infrastructure (experiment orchestration, data pipeline automation, continuous evaluation, competitive benchmarking) that enables every researcher at Articul8 to operate at a fundamentally higher level of depth, breadth, and velocity than would be possible alone
• Go deep: push the frontier of domain-specific model science — lead research on model adaptation methodology, data curation strategies, post-training methods (preference optimization, reward modeling, reasoning improvement, alignment), and training dynamics, deploying fleets of agentic systems to run exhaustive ablation studies, mixture experiments, and failure analyses in parallel
• Go broad: shape model strategy across all of Articul8's domains and verticals — define how the company identifies, prioritizes, and enters new model domains based on technical feasibility, customer value, and strategic differentiation, using agent-driven competitive intelligence and market analysis to scan the landscape continuously
• Define evaluation strategy as an agentic discipline — establish benchmark design, expert-grounded assessment, model failure analysis, and robustness standards, building always-on agentic evaluation harnesses that compare Articul8 models against leading open and closed alternatives and translate findings into concrete investment decisions in real time
• Lead cross-cutting research initiatives that multiply organizational capability — ensure advances in data perception, retrieval, post-training, and runtime orchestration strengthen the model layer, orchestrating parallel agent-driven research tracks across pillars so breakthroughs in one area compound across the platform
• Influence platform-level decisions — shape model lifecycle management, portfolio strategy, release criteria, and integration architecture, ensuring the platform is designed for humans and agentic systems to co-evolve and amplify each other
• Mentor senior researchers and raise the ceiling on human potential — coach Staff and Senior researchers on designing agent-augmented research programs, raise the bar on technical judgment and experimental rigor, and shape hiring for researchers who are driven to redefine what's possible
• Maintain hands-on research impact at the highest level — sustain a meaningful personal research contribution through technical work, publications, patents, and externally visible output, modeling what it means to be a world-class researcher who uses massively parallel agentic systems to achieve what was previously impossible

Required Qualifications:

• Education:
  
  PhD or MSc in Computer Science, Machine Learning, NLP, or a related field.
• Experience:
  
  10+ years in AI/ML research with an exceptional track record of impact — models or systems you built are in production and measurably changed outcomes. 4+ years developing LLM-based systems.
• Model lifecycle mastery:
  Deep hands-on experience across the full model development lifecycle — continued pretraining, supervised fine-tuning, post-training alignment, and production evaluation. You've made the hard calls about when a model is ready to ship and when it isn't.
• Evaluation rigor:
  You have designed evaluation methodology that goes beyond leader board metrics —…