Software Engineer - RL Environments

AfterQuery

$200K — $500K *
Information Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 1-4 years of experience in AI or RL environments
  • Relevant internships at AI safety or benchmarking organizations is a major plus
  • Deep understanding of data structure and its influence on model behavior
  • Skills in designing lightweight experiments and extracting insights
  • Experience in early-stage startups is a plus, valuing merit over pedigree

Responsibilities

  • Design data slices that reveal critical model failure modes across multiple domains
  • Build and enhance evaluation rubrics and reward signals for RLHF and RLVR training pipelines
  • Model annotator behavior to run experiments that boost model capabilities
  • Develop quantitative frameworks for dataset quality and impact evaluation
  • Create and manage both real-world and synthetic data pipelines
  • Collaborate with research teams to align training objectives with data specifications

Benefits

  • Profit sharing opportunity based on performance
  • Competitive equity options
  • Chance to work with leading AI research teams
  • Exposure to cutting-edge AI model training techniques
  • Opportunities to design and influence AI data systems
Full Job Description
The Role

As a SWE (Environments), you will design the datasets and evaluation rubrics that directly influence how frontier models learn. You'll work hands-on with research teams at top AI labs, experimenting with data collection strategies, diagnosing model failure modes, and developing the metrics that determine whether a model is actually improving. You'll go from hypothesis to live experiment quickly, and your output will feed directly into model training runs at scale.

Day to day, you will design data slices that expose meaningful failure modes across domains like finance, code, and enterprise workflows. You will build and refine reward signals for RLHF and RLVR pipelines. You will develop quantitative frameworks for measuring dataset quality, diversity, and downstream impact on alignment and capability. You will partner with lab research teams to translate their training objectives into concrete data and evaluation specifications.

What You'll Do
  • Design data slides and explore data shapes that expose meaningful model failure modes across domains like finance, code, and enterprise workflows
  • Build and refine evaluation rubrics and reward signals for RLHF and RLVR training pipelines
  • Model annotator behavior and run experiments to improve different model capabilities
  • Develop quantitative frameworks for measuring dataset quality, diversity, and downstream impact on model alignment and capability
  • Create and manage both real world & synthetic data pipelines
  • Partner with lab research teams to translate their training objectives into concrete data and evaluation specifications

What We're Looking For
  • 1-4 YOE
  • Major plus if they've worked for/interned for any RL environment companies in the past or any AI safety or benchmarking orgs like METR, Artificial Analysis, etc..
  • Genuine obsession with how data structure, selection, and quality drive model behavior
  • Ability to design lightweight experiments, move fast, and extract actionable insights from messy results
  • Former founders and early engineers at early stage startups are a plus. We don't filter on pedigree. We want people who can demonstrate they work hard, learn fast, and care deeply about getting the details right.

Compensation Structure:

$200k base + profit share (around 150% of base) + competitive equity

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