Research Engineer

Research Engineer

San Francisco, California, United States

About Mach Industries

Founded in 2023, Mach Industries is a rapidly growing defense technology company focused on developing next-generation autonomous defense platforms. At the core of our mission is the commitment to delivering scalable, decentralized defense systems that enhance the strategic capabilities of the United States and its allies. With a workforce of approximately 350 employees, we operate with startup agility and ambition.

Our vision is to redefine the future of warfare through cutting-edge manufacturing, innovation at speed, and unwavering focus on national security. We are dedicated to solving the next generation of warfare with lethal systems that deter kinetic conflict and protect global security.

The Role

The Natural Intelligence team is passionate about creating generally intelligent machines to be used for the good of all individual humans. We are a multi-disciplinary team researching and developing novel architectures and learning algorithms that enable efficient online learning. Research engineers in our group will have the opportunity to work on the entire development life cycle of the stack from hypothesis to deployment. Depending on your experience, your responsibilities may include, and are not limited to:

• Design and test learning rules that operate locally and continually
• Assemble extremely general model architectures
• Co-design algorithms against diverse substrates, prioritizing sparsity and energy efficiency
• Build training and eval harnesses, data pipelines and tooling to accelerate research
• Turn hypotheses into scalable architectures, documenting findings to inform future technical roadmaps for both hardware and applied research teams

Required Qualifications

• Proficiency in C++, Rust, Python, or C, with the ability to write clean, well-tested, and efficient code and accept agent-generated code
• Ability to execute in fast-paced, high-iteration environment, often delivering code or research multiple times per day
• Demonstrated ownership and ability to operate autonomously, selecting and driving projects to completion with minimal oversight
• Ability to work on-site in San Francisco, California

Preferred Qualifications

• Degree or equivalent research experience in ML, computer science, computational neuroscience, physics, electrical engineering, or applied mathematics
• Software engineering fundamentals paired with real ML depth: clean Python, fluency in current frameworks, and comfort interfacing with infrastructure
• Research intuition and experimental rigor: form a hypothesis, design the experiment and read the result honestly
• Experience building training and evaluation pipelines end-to-end, showing high judgment and managing tradeoffs in system design
• Published work or open-source contribution in AI/ML systems, physics, neuroscience, applied mathematics, etc.
• Experience implementing a large (>10,000 line) project, from architecture to deployment
• Perseverance, be self-directed and mission driven

ITAR Requirements

To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.

Engineer

$120,000 - $220,000 USD

By joining Mach, you're not just accepting a job—you're becoming a key part of a team that values your contributions and invests in your growth. Together, we aim to create a rewarding environment that sets the stage for long-term success.