Senior Applied Research Engineer 2

Overview Drata is a mission-driven company focused on helping organizations earn and keep the trust of their users, customers, partners, and prospects. We emphasize values such as integrity, customer obsession, speed, and a thoughtful hybrid work model with in-office collaboration Tuesday–Thursday and flexible Mondays and Fridays. We are an award-winning team of 600+ people worldwide, united by a culture that values trust, speed, and continuous growth. What You'll Do Design and evaluate information access and reasoning strategies across RAG, agents, and classic ML: chunking, embedding models, hybrid search, metadata filtering, semantic routing Prototype GenAI workflows that map and reason over compliance objects (controls risks requirements evidence) Explore ML and probabilistic approaches where GenAI is not the best fit: classifiers, ranking models, graph/link prediction, calibration, and structured prediction Build and maintain evaluation frameworks: golden datasets, automated quality metrics, regression detection Implement and tune ranking/reranking systems: cross-encoders, LLM-based rerankers, learning-to-rank, custom scoring functions Run experiments to validate hypotheses and quantify improvements before production rollout Debug failure modes and build error taxonomies across retrieval, reasoning, and generation Collaborate with AI and Software Engineers to hand off validated approaches for productionization Stay current on applied research in RAG, agents, LLM evaluation, and relevance modeling; bring innovations into the product Qualifications 6+ years of experience in applied research, data science, or ML with a focus on NLP, information retrieval, or knowledge systems 2+ years of hands-on experience building or contributing to production AI/ML systems Strong foundation in information retrieval: dense and sparse retrieval, embedding models, search relevance Experience with RAG systems: chunking strategies, vector databases, retrieval optimization Proficiency in evaluation methodology: metrics design, golden dataset creation, A/B testing, statistical significance Strong Python skills and comfort with notebook-driven research workflows Experience communicating research findings to engineering teams and translating insights into actionable improvements Bonus: Experience with compliance, legal, or document-heavy domains Bonus: Publications or contributions in IR, NLP, or RAG evaluation How We Support You Stock equity to share in the company’s growth and success Health and wellness: employer-paid premiums for medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents, plus wellness benefits and healthcare concierge services Financial well-being: 401(k), company-paid life and disability insurance, tax-advantaged spending accounts, and related voluntary offerings Family support: paid parental leave after six months, access to fertility and family-building benefits Growth and development: annual stipends for professional and personal development; access to internal learning opportunities Time off and flexibility: flexible vacation policy, paid holidays, and other perks This role will receive a competitive base salary, benefits, and stock, typically in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs). The applicable salary range for this role is: $192,000 - $259,800. #J-18808-Ljbffr Drata