Research Engineer (AI)

TL;DR

Research Engineer (AI/LLM): Developing and optimizing the model and decision-making stack for conversational AI agents with an accent on reliability, capability, and efficiency. Focus on designing frontier approaches for training, evaluation, and orchestration of LLMs in production.

Location: On-site in San Francisco

Salary: $200K – $400K + Equity

Company

Decagon is a leading conversational AI platform that enables enterprises to deploy personalized AI agents across multiple communication channels.

What you will do

• Lead research and engineering efforts to improve core conversational capabilities, including instruction following, retrieval, and memory.
• Build and iterate on end-to-end models and pipelines optimized for quality, efficiency, and user experience.
• Collaborate with platform and product engineers to integrate new models into production systems.
• Translate ambiguous research ideas into clear, iterative milestones and roadmaps.

Requirements

• 2+ years of experience in AI/ML engineering or research.
• Prior experience post-training and deploying LLMs in production environments.
• Fluency in Python and modern ML tooling for training, evaluation, and data pipelines.
• Track record of taking research prototypes to reliable production impact.
• Must be based in San Francisco for on-site work.

Culture & Benefits

• Flexible "take what you need" vacation policy.
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision benefits for employees and their families.
• Retirement planning options, including 401K.
• Parental leave and fertility/family building benefits through Carrot.
• Daily lunches and snacks provided in the office.