# Research Scientist - Frontier Data

**Company:** [AfterQuery](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/afterquery)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** AI Research
**Salary:** $150k – $250k/yr
**Skills:** RLHF, Rlvr, LLMs, Data Collection, Evaluation Frameworks, Dataset Quality, Model Alignment, Quantitative Analysis, Experiment Design, Ai Safety
**Posted:** 2026-04-14

> Designs datasets and evaluation frameworks for frontier AI models, collaborating with top labs to expose failure modes, refine RLHF/RLVR pipelines, and measure data impact on capabilities. Requires strong quantitative skills, familiarity with LLM training, and research experience up to master's level.

## Job Description

## What You'll Do
- Design data slices and explore data shapes that expose meaningful model failure modes across domains like finance, code, and enterprise workflows
- Build and refine evaluation rubrics and reward signals for RLHF and RLVR training pipelines
- Model annotator behavior and run experiments to improve different model capabilities
- Develop quantitative frameworks for measuring dataset quality, diversity, and downstream impact on model alignment and capability
- Partner with lab research teams to translate their training objectives into concrete data and evaluation specifications

## What We're Looking For
- Great candidates are undergrad research or master's research (but haven't done a PhD)
- Major plus if they've worked for/interned for any RL environment companies in the past or any AI safety or benchmarking orgs like METR, Artificial Analysis, etc.
- Genuine obsession with how data structure, selection, and quality drive model behavior
- Ability to design lightweight experiments, move fast, and extract actionable insights from messy results
- Comfort working across domains (you'll touch finance, software engineering, policy, and more)
- Strong quantitative instincts and familiarity with LLM training pipelines, **RLHF/RLVR**, or evaluation methodology
- A bias toward building over theorizing

## Compensation Structure
$250k-450k total compensation + equity

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