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AnthropicAnthropicSan Francisco, CA

Research Engineer, Universes

Builds next-generation training environments and evaluations for agentic AI models, blending research in reinforcement learning with robust engineering implementation. Requires strong technical judgment, agency, and experience in ML systems.

500k – 850k
HybridAI Research

About the role

About the Team

The Universes team within Research builds training environments for AI models to perform complex, long-horizon agentic tasks in ultra-realistic settings, teaching models to navigate ambiguity, handle interruptions, maintain context, and exercise judgment.

About the Role

Research Engineers build next-generation training environments for capable and safe agentic AI. This role blends research and engineering, implementing novel approaches, contributing to research direction, reinforcement learning, environment design, and capability evaluations.

Responsibilities

  • Build the next generation of agentic environments
  • Build rigorous evaluations that measure real capability
  • Collaborate across research and infrastructure teams to ship environments into production training
  • Debug and iterate rapidly across research and production ML stacks
  • Contribute to research culture through technical discussions and collaborative problem-solving

You may be a good fit if you

  • Are highly impact-driven — you care about outcomes, not activity
  • Operate with high agency
  • Have good research taste or senior technical experience, demonstrating good judgment in identifying what actually matters in complex problem spaces
  • Can balance research exploration with engineering implementation
  • Are passionate about the potential impact of AI and are committed to developing safe and beneficial systems
  • Are comfortable with uncertainty and adapt quickly as the landscape shifts
  • Have strong software engineering skills and can build robust infrastructure
  • Enjoy pair programming (we love to pair!)

Strong candidates may also have

  • Industry experience with large language model training, fine-tuning or evaluation
  • Industry experience building RL environments, simulation systems, or large-scale ML infrastructure
  • Senior experience in a relevant technical field even if transitioning domains
  • Deep expertise in sandboxing, containerization, VM infrastructure, or distributed systems
  • Published influential work in relevant ML areas

Logistics

Education requirements: At least a Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience.

Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.

Skills

Reinforcement LearningLLMsSimulation SystemsML InfrastructurePythonDistributed SystemsContainerizationSandboxingVirtual MachinesSoftware Engineering

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