Research Engineer / Scientist, Societal Impacts (AI)

TL;DR

Research Engineer / Scientist (AI): Designs and builds critical infrastructure that enables foundational research into how AI systems impact people and society with an accent on empirical methods and technical approaches. Focus on developing privacy-preserving tools to measure AI's effects at scale and translating research insights into actionable recommendations for both product and policy.

Location: Currently, staff are expected to be in one of the offices at least 25% of the time. Must be based in San Francisco, CA.

Salary: $350,000 - $500,000 USD

Company

hirify.global’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems, ensuring AI is safe and beneficial for users and society.

What you will do

• Design and implement scalable technical infrastructure that enables researchers to efficiently run experiments and evaluate AI systems.
• Architect systems that can handle uncertain and changing requirements while maintaining high standards of reliability.
• Lead technical design discussions to ensure infrastructure supports current and future research directions.
• Partner closely with researchers, data scientists, and policy experts to advance hirify.global’s safety mission.
• Interface with and improve internal technical infrastructure and tools.
• Generate insights about the potential societal impact of systems being developed.

Requirements

• Experience working with Research Scientists on ambiguous AI projects.
• Experience building and maintaining production-grade internal tools or research infrastructure.
• Proficiency in writing clean, well-documented code in Python.
• Comfortable making technical decisions with incomplete information while maintaining high engineering standards.
• Comfortable getting up-to-speed quickly on unfamiliar codebases and working with engineers from different backgrounds.
• Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience.

Nice to have

• Experience maintaining large, foundational infrastructure.
• Experience building simple interfaces that allow non-technical collaborators to evaluate AI systems.
• Experience working with and prioritizing requests from a wide variety of stakeholders, including research and product teams.
• Experience with distributed systems and can design for scale and reliability.
• Experience scaling and optimizing the performance of tools.

Culture & Benefits

• Competitive compensation and benefits.
• Optional equity donation matching.
• Generous vacation and parental leave.
• Flexible working hours.
• Lovely office space to collaborate with colleagues.