Member of Technical Staff, Research

a16z speedrun

$150K — $180K *
Consumer Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Experience leading research in agents, machine learning, simulation, or cognitive science.
  • Proven ability to design rigorous experiments that yield meaningful results.
  • Expert in building necessary systems to conduct and validate research.
  • Deep familiarity with large models and intelligent agents.
  • Track record of translating research into effective production systems.
  • Commitment to understanding human behavior beyond mere task completion.

Responsibilities

  • Own the full research process from conceptualization to production implementation.
  • Design and execute experiments to analyze agent behavior.
  • Create simulations that accurately reflect real user decision-making.
  • Develop benchmarks focused on behavioral fidelity of agents.
  • Train and assess agents using actual human data for validation.
  • Translate research insights into enhancements for models, memory systems, and runtime performance.
  • Publish findings through formal papers, technical documentation, and contributions to open-source projects.

Benefits

  • Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance.
  • Paid time off and vacation days to support work-life balance.
Full Job Description
In this role, you will build the research systems behind our behavioral intelligence agents. Your work will span simulation architectures, memory systems, computational cognitive science, continual learning, and agent architectures. The goal is to improve how agents model human behavior, make decisions, and act across real product experiences. You will also help define our research program through papers, technical writing, open-source work, and conference talks.

Responsibilities
  • Own research directions from question to production.
  • Design experiments for agent behavior.
  • Build simulations of real user decision-making.
  • Develop behavioral-fidelity benchmarks.
  • Train and evaluate agents against human data.
  • Translate research findings into model, memory, and runtime improvements.
  • Publish papers, technical write-ups, and open-source work.
Qualifications
  • Led research in agents, ML, simulation, or cognitive science.
  • Design rigorous experiments.
  • Build the systems needed to test your ideas.
  • Work deeply with large models and agents.
  • Turn research into production systems.
  • Care about human behavior, not just task completion.

Benefits include medical, dental, and vision coverage, plus paid time off and vacation.

We hire for potential, and we base compensation on what we believe you can achieve rather than years of experience or a list of skills.

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