# Research Engineer - Agency and Reasoning at Zyphra

Research Engineer - Agency and Reasoning at Zyphra in San Francisco. On-site, full-time. Posted March 17, 2026.

- Company: Zyphra
- Location: San Francisco
- Workplace: On-site
- Job type: Full-time
- Posted: 2026-03-17
- Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/zyphra/470057a3-171e-49e6-b236-25941e356bf1/application
- Source: https://jobmagic.ai/jobs/research-engineer-agency-and-reasoning-zyphra-bbgv66

## Requirements

- Strong research taste and intuition
- The ability to work through a research project from conception to execution to write-up
- Strong implementation and prototyping skillset
- A researcher who can take an idea from conception to experimentation extremely quickly
- The ability to work well and cooperate with others in a high-paced research setting
- Curiosity, interest, and joy in understanding intelligence.

## Description

### **Zyphra** is an artificial intelligence company based in San Francisco, California.

### **The Role:**

As a **Research Engineer - Agency and Reasoning**, you will be a core contributor to Zyphra’s Agency and Reasoning Team. You will be involved with performing novel research in reinforcement learning, post-training, and human preference learning, and applying your ideas at scale to our next generation of language models.

### **What We’re Looking For / Requirements:**

- Strong research taste and intuition

- The ability to work through a research project from conception to execution to write-up

- Strong implementation and prototyping skillset

- A researcher who can take an idea from conception to experimentation extremely quickly

- The ability to work well and cooperate with others in a high-paced research setting

- Curiosity, interest, and joy in understanding intelligence.

### **Qualifications / Additional Skills:**

- Experience and aptitude with reinforcement learning, either in the context of language model reasoning or more classical RL tasks

- Experience with language-model-supervised fine-tuning and preference-learning methods, such as DPO and simPO.

- Experience with context-length extension methods

- A good intuitive ability to understand model behaviors and correct them through iterative fine-tuning

- Interest in grappling in detail with data and spending significant time involved in data engineering and synthetic data generation

- Postgraduate degree in a scientific subject (Computer Science, EE/EECS, Mathematics, Physics)

- Previously published machine learning research in well-respected venues

- Highly proficient with PyTorch and Python

- We are excited and able to rapidly learn new fields and implement new ideas

- Excellent communication and collaboration skills, and can work effectively on both research and engineering implementation at scale

### **Why Work at Zyphra:**

- Our research methodology is to make grounded, methodical steps toward ambitious goals. Both deep research and engineering excellence are equally valued

- We strongly value new and crazy ideas and are very willing to bet big on new ideas

- We move as quickly as we can; we aim to minimize the bar to impact as low as possible

- We all enjoy what we do and love discussing AI

### **Benefits and Perks:**

- Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and FSA plans

- Competitive compensation and 401(k) plan

- Relocation and immigration support on a case-by-case basis

- In-office snacks and meals provided

- Unlimited PTO and company holidays

- In-person team in San Francisco with a collaborative, high-energy environment