As a Research MTS at Patronus AI, you will drive foundational research defining how agentic AI systems are trained and evaluated. Working at the intersection of reinforcement learning and scalable oversight, you’ll build simulation environments influencing frontier model development. This autonomous role translates open-ended agent cognition questions into rigorous experiments, benchmarks, and high-impact production systems.
Member of Technical Staff - Research at Patronus AI
Join Patronus AI, the frontier lab on a mission to simulate the world's intelligence and accelerate progress toward human-aligned AGI. As a Research Member of Technical Staff, you’ll work alongside a pedigree team from Meta AI and Google to define how agentic AI systems are trained and stress-tested. Backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Stanford, this role offers the chance to lead foundational research in reinforcement learning and scalable oversight while building the benchmarks that shape the future of AI safety.
What's the next step?
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Location
San Francisco, United States
Compensation
$175k-$300k + Equity
Company
Patronus AI
Role overview
Patronus AI is a frontier AI lab and simulation infrastructure company that builds tools to evaluate, benchmark, secure, and improve large language models and AI agents. Its platform helps enterprise and AI teams score model performance, generate adversarial test cases, detect hallucinations and other failure modes, monitor production behavior, and stress-test agents in simulated digital environments called Digital World Models.
What you will do
- Lead ambitious research projects end-to-end, from formulating open-ended problems in agent cognition to executing experiments with reinforcement learning and scalable oversight.
- Design and build sophisticated RL environments and simulation frameworks that evaluate agent trajectories, reasoning, and long-horizon planning capabilities.
- Train frontier models using post-training algorithms like GRPO and SFT, performing rigorous ablations to understand the impact of chain-of-thought reasoning and rewards.
Who this is a fit for
- Holds an MS or PhD in Computer Science or a related quantitative field with deep expertise in reinforcement learning, NLP, or agentic systems.
- Demonstrates a proven track record of taking open-ended research problems from concept to high-impact outcome with clean, reproducible Python code.
- Possesses the gumption to execute quickly and independently in a fast-paced environment while maintaining a high bar for experimental rigor and scientific integrity.
Why this role is remarkable
- Work alongside a world-class team of former Meta AI, Google, and Amazon AGI researchers who pioneered influential evaluations and published work like FinanceBench and Lynx.
- Tackle the frontier of AGI alignment by designing state-of-the-art simulation environments and reinforcement learning methods to stress-test the next generation of agents.
- Benefit from significant backing by top-tier investors including Lightspeed, Notable Capital, and Stanford, while partnering with major customers like Adobe and foundation labs.
How Jack & Jill work together
I get to know what you’re great at, then find roles you’d never find yourself.Ok, I'll go first. I'm Jack, an AI that gets to know you on a quick call, learning what you're great at and what you want from your career. Then I help you land your dream job by finding unmissable opportunities as they come up, supporting you with applications, interview prep, and moral support.
I recruit from Jack’s network and make the intro when I spot a great match.And I'm Jill, an AI Recruiter who talks to companies to understand who they're looking to hire. Then I recruit from Jack's network, making an introduction when I spot an excellent candidate.
Jack gets to know what you're great at and what you want next, then searches 15 million jobs daily and helps you discover roles at companies like this.
Meet Jack
What happens next?
Jack’s an AI agent for job searching and career coaching. He works for you.
Jill is the AI recruiter working for the company. She recruits from Jack’s network.
If your profile’s a match and Patronus AI wants to meet, Jill will make the intro. In the meantime, Jack will send you excellent alternatives.