Member of Technical Staff, Research

a16z speedrun

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

Qualifications

  • Led research in agents, machine learning, simulation, or cognitive science.
  • Designed rigorous experiments for testing hypotheses.
  • Built systems to validate research ideas and findings.
  • Worked extensively with large models and agents.
  • Converted research insights into functional production systems.
  • Focused on understanding human behavior beyond mere task completion.

Responsibilities

  • Own and direct research projects from inception to production.
  • Design and conduct experiments to explore agent behaviors.
  • Create simulations that replicate real user decision-making processes.
  • Establish benchmarks for behavioral fidelity in agents.
  • Train and test agents using data drawn from human interactions.
  • Translate research findings into improvements for models and runtime systems.
  • Contribute to the academic community through papers, technical documentation, and open-source projects.

Benefits

  • Medical, dental, and vision coverage.
  • Generous paid time off and vacation policies.
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.

Similar Jobs

More Jobs at a16z speedrun

  • Member of Technical Staff
    $150K — $180K *
    San Francisco, CA 94112 (San Francisco County)
    Enterprise Technology
    In-Person
  • AI Engineer
    $130K — $160K *
    Seattle, WA 98115 (King County)
    Information Technology
    In-Person
  • AI Engineer
    $150K — $180K *
    San Francisco, CA 94112 (San Francisco County)
    Information Technology
    In-Person
  • Founding Engineer
    $125K — $150K *
    Austin, TX 78745 (Travis County)
    Consumer Technology
    In-Person
  • Member of Technical Staff
    $130K — $160K *
    New York, NY 10025 (New York County)
    Information Technology
    In-Person

More Consumer Technology Jobs

Find similar Member of Technical Staff, Research jobs: