Research Engineer, QC Automation

Posted:
8/3/2026, 12:46:14 PM

Location(s):
California, United States ⋅ San Francisco, California, United States

Experience Level(s):
Junior ⋅ Mid Level

Field(s):
AI & Machine Learning ⋅ Data & Analytics

Workplace Type:
On-site

Pay:
$150k–$250k/yr

About the Role

An early-stage AI infrastructure company is hiring a Research Engineer, QC Automation — the #1 priority hire on the engineering team right now. You'll own end-to-end automation of quality control for AI training data generated by companies using the platform's infrastructure. This is a high-impact, high-autonomy role sitting at the intersection of data engineering, research, and systems design.

You'll be joining a ~15-person engineering group composed of Olympiad medalists, AI startup founders, and published researchers, working on one of the most critical challenges in post-training data quality for reinforcement learning.

What You'll Do

  • Automate quality control for training data produced by companies using the platform's infrastructure.

  • Build QC systems grounded in true understanding and human judgment — not heavy reliance on LLMs.

  • Define and enforce quality standards for post-training datasets.

  • Design experiments and metrics to grade agent outputs.

  • Partner with data vendors to debug quality issues, diagnose agent failure modes, and improve data generation processes.

  • Translate QC learnings into auditing systems, including sampling strategies and rule-based or model-assisted validation pipelines.

  • Continuously integrate QC learnings into infrastructure tooling and the data vendor portal to reduce anomalies, inconsistencies, and edge cases.

What We're Looking For

Required:

  • 2–4 years of experience in engineering or research roles.

  • Proficiency in Python, Docker, and Linux environments.

  • Strong understanding of what "good data" means and how to measure it.

  • Proven experience building scalable data validation pipelines and automated QA/QC systems end-to-end.

  • Experience working on benchmarks and evals — including reasoning about realistic tasks, reliable rubrics, and useful trajectories for RL training.

  • Knowledge of statistics and comfort designing metrics, experiments, and QA/QC processes.

  • Strong written and verbal communication skills for collaborating across time zones.

  • Genuine curiosity across domains and an ability to ask questions that drive understanding.

  • Ability to thrive in unstructured problem spaces and work independently in a fast-paced, early-stage startup environment.

Nice to have:

  • Background in AI evaluation, reinforcement learning environments, or post-training data pipelines.

  • Experience with reward signal analysis or reward hacking detection.

  • Prior startup experience or demonstrated comfort with ambiguity and self-direction.

Compensation & Benefits

  • Salary: $150,000 – $250,000 USD annually

  • Visa sponsorship available for eligible candidates

Location

  • San Francisco, CA (on-site) for U.S.-based candidates

  • Singapore (on-site) for Southeast Asia–based candidates

  • Fully remote as an independent contractor for candidates based elsewhere, particularly in Europe