Research Engineer, Platform

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Basis is a nonprofit applied AI research organization with two mutually reinforcing goals. The first is to understand and build intelligence
—establishing the mathematical principles of reasoning, learning, decision‑making, understanding, and explanation, and constructing software that implements these principles. The second is to advance society’s ability to solve intractable problems
—expanding the scale, complexity, and breadth of problems we can solve today, and accelerating our ability to solve problems in the future. To achieve these goals, we are building a new technological foundation inspired by human reasoning and a new kind of collaborative organization that puts human values first.

Research Engineers on the Platform team advance research methods and package them into reusable modules that others can build on. You will develop Basis core technology modules (fundamental algorithmic components like Chi Rho, Effectful, Weighted), contribute research‑driven capabilities to commercial platform offerings, and ensure research advances have clear paths to impact—whether commercial or societal.

We are looking for people who bridge research excellence and engineering rigor. The ideal Research Engineer has published research and shipped production code, translates experimental techniques into robust implementations, and architects software that enables others to build on your work. You will identify high‑value research problems aligned with Basis mission and develop them from ideation through concrete implementation.

This role is distinguished from Operations Research Engineers (who focus on internal tooling) by emphasis on advancing research methods for platform and commercial applications. You will work on Core Tech Module Teams and contribute to research that defines Basis’s technological foundation.

We seek individuals who excel technically and value probing concepts at their foundations. Our research engineers aspire to rigorous, high‑quality science and engineering, but are not afraid to tinker, make mistakes, and explore radically different ideas to get there.

Basis is a collaborative effort, both internally and with our external partners; we look for people who enjoy working with others on problems larger than they can tackle alone.

• Have demonstrated ability to conduct research of high quality, evidenced by:
  • Publications at top‑tier conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, POPL, PLDI, OOPSLA)
  • Technical reports or preprints showing novel research contributions
  • Open‑source research projects with significant adoption or citations
• Have demonstrated ability to drive software projects from start to finish, evidenced by:
  • Research code released as production‑quality libraries or frameworks
  • Contributions to major open‑source projects (PyTorch, Tensor Flow, JAX, or equivalents)
  • Systems built that span research prototypes through deployable implementations
• Possess deep knowledge of relevant technical areas including probabilistic programming, causal inference, program synthesis, neural architectures, or related fields central to Basis research directions.
• Be proficient in research engineering tools including Python, PyTorch/JAX, version control, testing frameworks, documentation systems, and software engineering practices that make research code maintainable and extensible.
• Understand paths from research to impact, designing experiments, implementing solutions, and evaluating results without extensive direction.
• Value software quality and reusability, designing modules that others can build on, writing comprehensive documentation and tests, and architecting systems that remain coherent as they evolve.
• Progress with autonomy and intellectual curiosity, identifying valuable research directions, designing experiments, implementing solutions, and evaluating results autonomously.
• Be excited about solving real‑world problems and having positive societal impact through research that advances our understanding of intelligence and our ability to tackle intractable challenges.

• PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning,…