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AI Agent Researcher

$160K – $320K • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus

San FranciscoOn-siteFull-time
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Opens our application in Ashby — takes about five minutes.

About Us

Vast.ai’s cloud powers AI projects and businesses all over the world. We are democratizing and decentralizing AI computing—reshaping our future for the benefit of humanity.

We are a growing and highly motivated team dedicated to an ambitious technical plan. Our structure is flat, our ambitions are out‑sized, and leadership is earned by shipping excellence.

We seek engineers with strong intrinsic drive, a true passion for advancing the state of the art, and a mix of architecture, coding, and communication skills.

LOCATION: On-site at our office in San Francisco or Westwood, Los Angeles.

About the Role

As an Agent Research Engineer, you will help advance the highest levels of the tech stack to imbue AI systems with true agency. Collaborating directly with our technical founder and diverse team, we will build the next generation of general learning agents. Possessing and maintaining a wide, deep and holistic knowledge base of cutting-edge research is crucial for advancing the mission. Many are called, but few are chosen.

  • Full-Time

  • On-site at either our SF or LA offices

Tech Stack

Python, Engrish, LLMs, ANNs, C++/Cuda

Ideal Experience

  • Deep expertise in systems engineering across the tech stack

  • Strong holistic background in machine learning theory and practice

  • Diverse knowledge of neural architectures/circuits: transformers etc

  • Published research at top AI conferences

Key Responsibilities

  • Lead cutting-edge research in AI agents, focusing on memory, reliability, and reasoning

  • Prototype and evaluate novel state-of-the-art methods/models

Interview Process

After submitting your application, our technical team reviews your credentials. If selected, you'll proceed through the following stages:

  • Initial screening (virtual 15 minutes)

  • Quick dive into Vast, systems and architectures (virtual 30 minutes)

  • LLM assisted coding assessment (virtual 1 hour)

  • Meet and greet with coding assessment (on-site 2 hours)

Our goal is to complete the interview process in two weeks.

Benefits

  • Comprehensive health, dental, vision, and life insurance

  • 401(k) with company match

  • Meaningful early-stage equity

  • Onsite meals, snacks, and close collaboration with founders/tech leaders

  • Ambitious, fast-paced startup culture where initiative is rewarded

Why Vast.ai

20,000+

GPUs on the platform

25,000+

monthly customers

8 years

of operations data

We're building the infrastructure layer where AI agents and developers programmatically provision and manage GPU compute.

All technical roles report to Jake Cannell, the CEO and founder — a prolific writer and thinker on AI.

LOVE in a simbox is all you needThe Brain as a Universal Learning Machine

Offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

We love to work. We can't help it; we are witnessing the birth of AGI.

Apply for this role

Or email the team directly at jobs@vast.ai