Role description
Applied ComputeThe role
As an applied research engineer, you’ll own customer engagements end-to-end: understanding their data, their workflows, and their problems, then building and deploying agents that deliver real value. For our largest customers, you'll train custom models tailored to their specific needs. For others, you'll take what you learn and bring it back to improve our general agents.
What you'll do
Train and post-train models for enterprises, from environment design through deployment
Own engagements end-to-end, working directly with technical and business stakeholders
Navigate new customer architectures, data systems, and requirements quickly
Surface learnings from customers and contribute them back to our platform
Collaborate across research, product, and infrastructure to define architectures, evaluation frameworks, and best practices
What we're looking for
Meaningful AI research experience, either in industry or academic work
Comfort diving into unfamiliar codebases and training models on real-world, messy data
Strong problem-solving skills, especially in ambiguous, fast-changing environments
Ability to work directly with customers: listening, empathizing, and understanding how their organizations operate
Desire to own problems end-to-end and deliver outcomes
Strong candidates also have
Experience training or fine-tuning language models in production settings
Background building RL environments, evaluation frameworks, or agent systems
Previous experience as a founder or early engineer at a zero-to-one company
Technical creativity through side projects, open source contributions, or published work
Experience at companies with forward-deployed or customer-facing engineering cultures
The U.S. base salary range for this full-time position is $200,000–$320,000. Total compensation for this role also includes meaningful equity in a fast-growing startup, along with a comprehensive benefits package designed to support you both personally and professionally. Base salary is determined by a range of factors including individual qualifications, experience, skills, interview performance, market data, and work location. The listed salary range is intended as a guideline and may be adjusted.
Benefits & Logistics
This role is based in San Francisco. We work from our office in the Mission. We offer:
Competitive compensation and equity
100% employer-paid health insurance coverage for you and your family
Unlimited PTO
Paid parental leave
Daily lunches and dinners
Transportation and relocation support
5% 401(k) match
We sponsor visas. While we can't guarantee success for every candidate or role, if you're the right fit, we're committed to working through the process with you. We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. As set forth in Applied Compute’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.