Principal AI Researcher (Agentic Systems & AI Infrastructure)

About Us

Co-founded in 2023 by Joe Laws and Grant Verstandig Trase Systems is AI Uncomplicated. Trase empowers enterprise leaders to harness the full potential of AI without the associated complexity and risks. We are an end-to-end solution for deploying managing and optimizing AI in the enterprise. Our platform specializes in bridging the last mile of AI adoption unlocking AIs full potential while driving efficiency and significant cost savings. Trase is at the forefront of AI Agent innovation topping the Hugging Face GAIA Leaderboard for Generalized AI Assistants ahead of industry giants such as Google Meta Microsoft and OpenAI. We are leveraging our cutting-edge technologies to develop mission-critical agentic applications in complex industries such as Healthcare Oil & Gas and National Security.

About the Role

As a Principal AI Researcher you will define and drive the long-term research direction for the Trase operating system the agentic execution platform powering autonomous systems in regulated environments. This role sits at the intersection of frontier AI research agentic systems orchestration infrastructure and production deployment with a focus on how models behave inside real-world execution environments rather than solely on offline benchmark performance.

You will lead research across areas such as agent workflows tool use long-lived execution orchestration and autonomous system reliability while conducting large-scale experimentation and advancing novel approaches in applied AI systems.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role operating across research systems and product. You will drive technical breakthroughs in agentic infrastructure and applied AI systems own the end-to-end research-to-production lifecycle and work closely with engineering and product teams to translate frontier research into scalable production-grade systems deployed across Trase.

Why This Role Exists

Trase OS coordinates long-lived agents tool-augmented LLMs multi-agent workflows and execution in regulated enterprise environments. As these systems scale the core challenge shifts from raw model capability to system correctness orchestration reliability infrastructure governance and safe autonomous execution.

We are particularly interested in candidates with expertise or research interest in areas such as:

• agent-to-agent learning
• orchestration and harness engineering
• infrastructure governance for AI operating systems
• long-lived execution and memory systems
• SLMs (small language models) model optimization and fine-tuning recipes
• post-training adaptation techniques and model behavior shaping
• and evaluation frameworks for autonomous agents.

This role will help define how next-generation AI systems are researched evaluated and safely operated in production.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the long-term AI/ML research strategy and technical roadmap for Trase OS in alignment with product and platform direction.
• Lead large-scale experimentation and prototyping efforts requiring significant compute infrastructure translating frontier AI research into scalable production-grade systems with measurable impact.
• Drive original research and technical breakthroughs in agentic systems autonomous execution multi-agent orchestration post-training and fine-tuning systems SLM/LLM-based architectures and applied AI infrastructure.
• Design how models operate within long-lived execution environments including agent workflows tool use planning memory systems reasoning and human-in-the-loop controls.
• Establish evaluation methodologies and reliability frameworks for autonomous systems including benchmarking regression testing safety controllability and production behavior analysis.
• Drive architecture decisions across orchestration model serving routing inference and infrastructure governance including latency reliability and cost optimization.
• Partner closely with engineering and product teams to operationalize research outcomes into deployable systems and enterprise workflows.
• Build AI systems that operate reliably in regulated and constrained environments including secure cloud on-premise and air-gapped deployments.
• Contribute to the broader AI research community through technical papers publications conference participation architecture proposals and thought leadership.
• Serve as a senior technical authority and mentor across the organization influencing technical direction research rigor experimentation practices and best practices across research engineering and product teams.

Requirements

• 1215 years of experience in machine learning AI systems or applied AI research including experience operating at a Principal Distinguished or equivalent technical level.
• Strong research and publication track record including authored papers major technical contributions or active participation in frontier AI research.
• Experience publishing at top-tier conferences or contributing influential open-source research or AI infrastructure systems.
• Experience conducting large-scale experimentation requiring significant compute infrastructure evaluation workflows and iterative model/system analysis.
• Deep expertise in one or more areas including agentic systems LLMs and generative AI multi-agent systems reasoning systems reinforcement learning orchestration infrastructure AI systems reliability NLP multimodal systems or deep learning.
• Hands-on experience with agent-based systems prompt engineering RAG RLHF SLMs fine-tuning/post-training techniques tool integration memory systems and human-in-the-loop orchestration.
• Proven experience building deploying and operating enterprise-grade AI systems including GenAI LLM or agent-based applications at scale.
• Strong understanding of ML system behavior in production including reliability latency cost tradeoffs observability evaluation frameworks regression testing and failure modes.
• Strong systems thinking and demonstrated ability to partner cross-functionally with engineering and product organizations to move research into production systems.
• Strong programming and prototyping skills in Python and modern ML infrastructure stacks with experience in Java or related systems languages preferred.
• Experience deploying AI/ML systems in regulated constrained or enterprise environments and demonstrated ability to lead technical direction from research through production impact.

Preferred Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science Machine Learning AI Systems or a related field.
• Experience building and operating AI/ML platforms supporting the full model lifecycle including training evaluation deployment and monitoring.
• Experience optimizing ML inference or orchestration systems in real-time distributed or resource-constrained environments.

Trase Specific Benefits:

• Career track opportunity with potential for rapid advancement withstrong performanceas the firm grows
• 100% employer paid comprehensive health care including medical dental and vision for you and your family.
• Paid maternity and paternity for 14 weeks at employees normal pay.
• Unlimited PTO with management approval.
• Opportunities for professional development and continued learning.
• Optional 401K FSA and equity incentives available.
• Mental health benefits are available through Tara Mind .

Were an Equal Opportunity Employer: Youll receive consideration for employment without regard to race sex color religion sexual orientation gender identity national origin protected veteran status or on the basis of disability.

Salary Range: $00. This represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience skills and other factors.

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Our Trase Benefits:

For full-time roles only

• Career track opportunity with potential for rapid advancement withstrong performanceas the firm grows
• 100% employer paid comprehensive health care including medical dental and vision for you and your family.
• Paid maternity and paternity for 14 weeks at employees normal pay.
• Unlimited PTO with management approval.
• Opportunities for professional development and continued learning.
• Optional 401K FSA and equity incentives available.
• Mental health benefits are available through Tara Mind .

Were an Equal Opportunity Employer: Youll receive consideration for employment without regard to race sex color religion sexual orientation gender identity national origin protected veteran status or on the basis of disability.

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