Postdoctoral AI Fellow, Post-Training for Materials Discovery

Location: Los Altos, California, United States; hybrid workplace

Salary: $144,000–$207,000 per year for California-based roles.

Company

hirify.global develops AI, robotics, driving, and materials-science capabilities to improve human mobility and quality of life.

What you will do

• Define and pursue an original research direction in model post-training using materials discovery as a scientific testbed.
• Develop and evaluate post-training methods involving reinforcement learning, data generation and selection, evaluation, or agentic workflows.
• Build robust, reusable, readable, modular, and reproducible research prototypes beyond proof of concept.
• Collaborate with materials scientists, ML researchers, and software engineers to translate research into real-world capabilities.
• Publish research using open-data use cases and present findings at major AI and scientific conferences.
• Apply capabilities to Toyota-relevant use cases while respecting confidentiality and publication constraints.

Requirements

• Ph.D. in machine learning, computer science, statistics, or a related field, obtained within the past three years.
• Expertise in model post-training or a closely related area, including reinforcement learning, supervised fine-tuning, evaluation, or agentic systems.
• Strong record of original AI or machine learning research through publications, open-source work, or other significant research contributions.
• Ability to identify important research questions, scope open-ended ideas into projects, and design rigorous experiments and evaluations.
• Ability to design, implement, and debug readable, modular, and reproducible machine learning research code in Python.
• Experience with PyTorch or a comparable framework.
• Ability to work in a culture that values diversity, collaboration, humility, and learning.

Nice to have

• Experience applying machine learning to scientific or engineering problems or collaborating with domain experts.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work within the Accelerated Materials Design and Discovery program.
• One-year postdoctoral appointment with an option to extend for another year by mutual agreement.
• Collaboration with an academic AI co-mentor may be developed after joining, subject to institutional arrangements.
• Publications and conference presentations are encouraged and expected.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, plus paid time off including holiday pay and sick time.

Hiring process

• No specific selection stages or application instructions are provided.