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DecagonDecagonSan Francisco, CA

Staff Research Engineer

Staff Research Engineer leads development of conversational AI models for enterprise support agents, owning multi-quarter initiatives from research to production deployment. Requires 8+ years in AI/ML with experience deploying LLMs, Python fluency, and cross-functional leadership.

325k – 425k
On-site8+ YOEML Engineering

About the role

Responsibilities

  • Lead research and engineering efforts to improve core conversational capabilities in production, including instruction following, retrieval, memory, and long-horizon task completion.
  • Build and iterate on end-to-end models and pipelines that optimize for quality, efficiency, and user experience.
  • Partner with platform and product engineers to integrate new models into production systems.
  • Break down ambiguous research ideas into clear, iterative milestones and roadmaps.
  • Mentor other researchers/engineers, set technical direction, and establish best practices for applied research and engineering.

Requirements

  • 8+ 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 (training, evaluation, data pipelines).
  • Track record of taking research ideas from prototype → reliable, measurable production impact.
  • Ability to define a roadmap, break ambiguity into milestones, and lead cross-functional execution.

Compensation

$325K – $425K + equity

Skills

PythonLLMsMachine LearningPyTorchTransformersPrompt EngineeringRetrieval Augmented GenerationModel TrainingModel EvaluationData Pipelines

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