Research Engineer, Infrastructure, RL Systems
Hybrid (San Francisco, California)$350k - $475kPosted 11mo ago
About the role
Infrastructure research engineer role focused on designing and building core systems to enable scalable, efficient training of large models through reinforcement learning. Bridge between RL algorithms and distributed training/inference at scale, improving rollout/reward pipelines, reliability, observability, and orchestration for production-ready RL systems.
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and optimize the infrastructure that powers large-scale reinforcement learning and post-training workloads.
- Improve the reliability and scalability of RL training pipeline, distributed RL workloads, and training throughput.
- Develop shared monitoring and observability tools to ensure high uptime, debuggability, and reproducibility for RL systems.
- Collaborate with researchers to translate algorithmic ideas into production-grade training pipelines.
- Build evaluation and benchmarking infrastructure that measures model progress on helpfulness, safety, and factuality.
- Publish and share learnings through internal documentation, open-source libraries, or technical reports that advance the field of scalable AI infrastructure.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in computer science, electrical engineering, statistics, machine learning, physics, robotics, or similar.
- Strong engineering skills, ability to contribute performant, maintainable code and debug in complex codebases.
- Understanding of deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, JAX) and their underlying system architectures.
- Thrive in a highly collaborative environment involving many cross-functional partners and subject matter experts.
- A bias for action with a mindset to take initiative to work across different stacks and teams.
Skills
Required:Large-scale RL infrastructure designDistributed training and orchestrationCollaboration with researchers
Nice to have:Monitoring and observability
Benefits
- generous health, dental, and vision benefits
- unlimited PTO
- paid parental leave
- relocation support as needed
Last updated Jul 8, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
About Thinking Machines Lab
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Thinking Machines Lab is an artificial intelligence research and product company. We’re building a future where everyone has access to the knowledge and tools to make AI work for their unique needs and goals.
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