Artificial Intelligence Researcher

Surge Group is partnering with an unnamed early-stage AI research company working with frontier labs on reinforcement learning and post-training problems. The AI Researcher will design experiments, develop training and evaluation methods, and collaborate with customer research teams to deliver measurable improvements in advanced AI models.

Responsibilities

• Design and run post-training experiments using reinforcement learning, supervised fine-tuning and preference optimization
• Develop reward functions, verifiers and evaluation frameworks that distinguish real capability gains from reward hacking
• Shape training environments and trajectory data, investigating how correctness, coverage and data quality affect model behavior
• Analyze training dynamics and experimental results across distributed GPU workloads, using the findings to guide subsequent research
• Collaborate directly with frontier research teams, translating ambitious research objectives into concrete technical deliverables

Preferred

• Model-training work at a frontier lab, a respected emerging research lab or an AI data lab—or published research or a released model with strong results on a recognized benchmark
• AI Lab Experience
• Published Research
• Model Release
• Benchmark Performance

Benefits

• The package includes $300,000–$500,000 base salary and equity , with visa sponsorship and transfers supported.
• Meaningful equity
• Visa sponsorship and transfers supported
• Hybrid, three days in office

Company

• Specialist recruitment solutions for industry-leading businesses
• https://group-surge.com/
• 11-50 employees

Qualifications

• You have hands-on experience in AI research and can explain the models you trained, the decisions you made and the results you achieved
• 2-7+ years in applied research or a research scientist role , with substantive reinforcement learning experience
• Strong experimental judgement: knowing which signals to trust, where evaluations fall short and what to investigate next
• Practical experience with Python, PyTorch and modern model-training workflows
• An RL-focused PhD
• Model-training work at a frontier lab, a respected emerging research lab or an AI data lab—or published research or a released model with strong results on a recognized benchmark
• 2-7+ years in applied research or a research scientist role , with substantive reinforcement learning experience.

Required skills

• Model Training, Reinforcement Learning

Experience

• 2+ years