Senior Research Engineer

Research Engineer

Ai2 is a Seattle based non-profit AI research institute founded in 2014 by the late Paul Allen. Our mission is building breakthrough AI to solve the world's biggest problems. We develop foundational AI research and innovation to deliver real-world impact through large-scale open models, data, robotics, conservation, and beyond.

To thrive as a Research Engineer at Ai2, you'll bring a blend of deep technical expertise and a collaborative, self-directed mindset. You have extensive experience with deep learning and/or foundation models — whether through a PhD in ML or equivalent hands-on industry work. You're a curious, agile engineer who can generate ideas, design experiments, and implement them in Python against real AI systems. You communicate research insights clearly to technical stakeholders, and you're energized by working with strong contributors toward shared, ambitious goals.

As a Research Engineer on the team, you'll be a core member responsible for training Ai2's flagship open models (e.g. Olmo, Molmo, and beyond). From system design to experiment release, you'll own end-to-end delivery while collaborating closely with research and engineering colleagues to push the boundaries of open model research.

We are a non-profit AI institute focused on developing foundational AI research and innovation to deliver real-world positive impact through large-scale open models, data, and artifacts (e.g., Olmo, Tulu, Molmo, FlexOlmo). Balancing academic freedom with corporate-level scale, Ai2 is uniquely resourced and positioned to deliver high-impact, truly open research. Our team unites the best and brightest scientific and engineering minds to explore the potential of truly open AI. Through our efforts, including the pioneering Olmo and Molmo releases, we endeavor to empower academics, researchers, and AI developers more broadly to advance the science of language models, multimodal models, and generative AI.

If you are passionate about advancing the science of AI through open, rigorous research and believe in accessible AI for the common good, we want to hear from you!

Key responsibilities:

• Building and optimizing infrastructure for LLM, multimodal, and agentic research — including training/inference pipelines, dataset curation, and large-scale preprocessing
• Designing, training, and evaluating multimodal models (vision + language) and agentic workflows, including tool use, planning, and long-horizon tasks
• Scoping and leading research projects, prioritizing experiments for highest impact
• Bringing strong software engineering practices to a research environment and bridging cutting-edge work to production-quality products
• Contributing to and supporting the open-source community through model releases, datasets, public APIs, and technical reports

What You'll Need:

• 4+ years of ML infrastructure experience — data preprocessing, model training, evaluation, inference, and deployment
• Experience with end-to-end model development — dataset construction, training, fine-tuning, evaluation, profiling, and monitoring
• Familiarity with modern model architectures — including LLMs (MoEs, long-context models), vision-language models (e.g., Molmo, LLaVA), and experience training and evaluating both
• Agentic systems knowledge — tools, memory, and long-running workflows
• Strong software engineering fundamentals — performant, scalable systems and confident debugging
• Proficiency in Python and a major ML framework (PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow), with the flexibility to pick up new tools as needed
• Familiarity with cloud and containerization (e.g., GCP, AWS, Docker)
• Strong communication and collaboration skills — we're a small, close-knit team and work best when everyone's pulling in the same direction

Education/Experience:

• BS or MSc in Computer Science, Statistics, Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or a related quantitative field (or equivalent experience)
• A minimum of 2 years of software development experience. (or equivalent experience)

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by a team member to successfully perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the functions.

• Must be able to remain in a stationary position for long periods of time.
• The ability to communicate information and ideas so others will understand. Must be able to exchange accurate information in these situations.
• The ability to observe details at close range.
• Can work under deadlines.

Persons in these roles are expected to work from our offices in Seattle. On-site requirements vary based on position and team. If you have questions about on-site work arrangements for this role, please ask your recruiter.

Our base salary range is $146,880 - $220,320, and in addition we have generous bonus plans to provide a competitive compensation package.

In addition to Ai2's core mission, we also aim to contribute to humanity through our treatment of each member of the Ai2 Team. Some highlights are:

• We are a learning organization – because everything Ai2 does is ground-breaking, we are learning every day. Similarly, through weekly Ai2 Academy lectures, a wide variety of world-class AI experts as guest speakers, and our commitment to your personal on-going education, Ai2 is a place where you will have opportunities to continue learning alongside your coworkers.
• We value diversity – We seek to hire, support, and promote people from all genders, ethnicities, and all levels of experience regardless of age. We particularly encourage applications from women, non-binary individuals, people of color, members of the LGBTQA+ community, and people with disabilities of any kind.
• We value inclusion – We understand the value that people's individual experiences and perspectives can bring to an organization, and we are building a culture in which all voices are heard, respected and considered.
• We emphasize a healthy work/life balance – we believe our team members are happiest and most productive when their work/life balance is optimized. While we value powerful research results which drive our mission forward, we also value dinner with family, weekend time, and vacation time. We offer generous paid vacation and sick leave as well as family leave.
• We are collaborative and transparent – we consider ourselves a team, all moving with a common purpose. We are quick to cheer our successes, and even quicker to share and jointly problem solve our failures.
• We are in Seattle – and our office is on the water! We have mountains, we have lakes, we have four seasons, we bike to work, we have a vibrant theater scene, and we have so much else. We even have kayaks for you to paddle right outside our front door. We welcome interest from applicants from outside of the United States.
• We are friendly – chances are you will like every one of the 200+ (and growing) people who work here. We do.