← All roles

Staff Gen AI Research Scientist

Anduril· Air Dominance & Strike : Mission Autonomy Engineering : Mission Software Engineering
Apply on company site
Hybrid (Costa Mesa, CA), Hybrid (Seattle, WA), Hybrid (Washington, DC)$220k - $292kFull-timePosted 2mo ago

About the role

AI Research Scientist to design, fine-tune, and deploy next-generation generative AI, LLMs, and agentic systems for Anduril’s air-dominance platforms and collaborative autonomous behaviors. Highly applied research role with ~60% applied research/experimentation and 40% hands-on coding, optimizing models for edge hardware and multi-agent missions.

Responsibilities

  • Develop, pre-train, and fine-tune in-house LLMs and multimodal foundation models. Apply SOTA post-training alignment techniques (SFT, RLHF, DPO) to maximize capability while minimizing cost and footprint.
  • Architect and optimize models to run directly on tactical edge compute and power-constrained hardware onboard physical assets. Optimize model latency, memory usage, and execution speed through quantization, distillation, and pruning.
  • Design and implement robust agentic architectures, multi-agent coordination frameworks, and planning loops for complex, multi-domain military missions.
  • Collaborate closely with computer vision, perception, and motion planning teams to build systems capable of reasoning over diverse modalities, including camera feeds, radar, telemetry, and text-based operational orders.
  • Define and execute data collection strategies across physical assets, test sites, and virtual simulations. Work with AI Infrastructure engineers to build scalable evaluation frameworks that measure model performance, reliability, and safety in high-stakes environments.
  • Build early-stage prototypes alongside customers, quickly iterate on feedback, and scale those prototypes into production-grade features deployed across our family of systems.

Qualifications

  • Strong production-level coding skills in Python and deep learning frameworks (like PyTorch or JAX).
  • Hands-on experience training, fine-tuning, and evaluating LLMs, Generative AI, or multimodal models.
  • A strong background in a classical technical discipline (Computer Vision, NLP, Robotics, or Speech) with 2+ years of dedicated experience focusing on generative models and modern transformer architectures.
  • Experience using modern model training, alignment, and orchestration tools (e.g., Axolotl, Hugging Face, DeepSpeed, Megatron-LM, LangChain, or LlamaIndex).
  • Ability to operate comfortably in a fast-paced environment, moving from ambiguous mission requirements to concrete code and functional prototypes.
  • Degree (B.S., M.S., or Ph.D.) in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, Physics, Mathematics, or a related technical field.
  • Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Top Secret security clearance.

Skills

Required:PythonDeep learning frameworks (PyTorch, JAX)LLM training and fine-tuningModel optimization techniquesMulti-agent systems and planningAI governance and safety
Nice to have:Edge AI / hardware acceleration

Benefits

  • Comprehensive, competitive benefits package (health, recovery, and continuing support) available to employees.
Last updated Sep 9, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Anduril

defense-aero-and-safetyliquid-ai-recruiting-targetsetter-30setter-30-2026-q1wing-list-2026wing-list-2026-giga-stage
Company profileWebsite

More open roles at Anduril