Research Engineer (General)

Job description

## **About HUD** [HUD](https://www.hud.ai/) is building infrastructure to create RL training data and evals for frontier AI agents, as well as a marketplace to sell these to frontier labs through the HUD marketplace. Our platform is used by frontier labs, Fortune 500 companies, and startups. We’ve raised $16M from top VCs and were YC W25. ## **About the role** *This is a general application for candidates who are unsure which research focus -* [*QC Automation*](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/hud/e6f9812e-dcfd-422b-b614-1d1273c16003)*,* [*Benchmarks*](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/hud/c5252f0e-fd1d-41cf-b803-b0ce1fe4cea1)*, or* [*Synthetic Data*](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/hud/44e356fa-801c-4dac-99f5-848d80a68500) *- they would be a fit for. We would love to meet you and figure it out together. However, if you already have a focus in mind, **please apply to only that application**.* We're looking for Research Engineers to build the technical foundation for training and evaluating frontier AI agents. You’ll build the systems for creating new environments, improve data quality, and translate real-world workflows into tasks and benchmarks. ## **Responsibilities** - Build systems for creating, running, evaluating, and improving agent training environments - Design experiments to understand model behavior, agent failure modes, and data quality issues - Develop tools that help researchers, engineers, and data vendors create higher-quality tasks, trajectories, and feedback loops - Work across the full lifecycle of agent training data - task design, environment setup, trajectory collection, evaluation, and validation - Partner with external vendors to identify bottlenecks and improve the quality and throughput of HUD’s data engine - Build metrics and analyses that help us understand whether our tasks, environments, and evals are actually useful for training frontier agents ## Experience **You may be a good fit if you have:** - Proficiency in Python, Docker, and Linux environments - Experience working on benchmarks and evals - you can reason about what makes a task realistic, a rubric reliable, an environment usable, and a trajectory useful for RL training - Strong attention to detail and the ability to spot subtle inconsistencies in data, model behavior, or task design - Experience building tools, pipelines, experiments, or infrastructure without a fully prescribed roadmap - Early-stage startup experience with ability to work independently in fast-paced environments **Strong candidates may also have:** - Experience building internal tools, research infrastructure, or data pipelines - Experience designing metrics and validation workflows - A background in competitive programming, Olympiad medaling, research, or unusually strong independent project experience - Thrive in unstructured problem spaces - Strong communication skills for remote collaboration across time zones *We prioritize technical aptitude and learning potential over years of experience. Motivated candidates are encouraged to apply even if they don't meet all criteria.* ## **Team & company details** - **Team Size**: ~25 people currently, mostly full-time in-person, but some remote. - **Our team:** Our team includes 4 International Olympiad medalists (IOI, ILO, IPhO), serial AI startup founders, and researchers with publications at ICLR, NeurIPS, etc. - **Company stage:** We have 8 figures in funding and high revenue growth. We’re scaling profitably and quickly to meet very strong demand. ## **Logistics** - **Employment**: Full-time. - **Location**: On-site in the San Francisco Bay Area. - **Visa Sponsorship**: We provide support for relocation and visas for strong full-time candidates to the US. - **Timeline**: Applications are rolling. The process is 2 technical interviews and a 2-3 day work trial. ## What we offer - Competitive compensation based on experience and location - 100% covered top-of-the-line medical, dental, and vision from Blue Shield of CA - Lunch and dinner when you’re in the office - Company-wide holiday break (Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day) on top of PTO and paid holidays - Other perks including an Equinox membership, 401k, and commuter benefits - Unlimited\* access to tokens for ChatGPT, Claude Code, Cursor, etc. \**By unlimited, we mean no one on our token usage leaderboard has ever hit a limit. So we have no idea what the limit is.* Due to high volume, we may not actively respond to every application, but feel free to contact us at [recruiting@hud.so](mailto:recruiting@hud.so) or elsewhere if we missed your application!