Applied Methods
~The MetaResearch & ScienceMember of Technical Staff

Member of Technical Staff

Members of Technical Staff at AI labs drive core breakthroughs in model development by owning critical junctures in the training pipeline—from data strategy and synthetic generation through pre-training, mid-training, and post-training optimization. They combine deep research insight with engineering rigor to inject capabilities across reasoning, coding, mathematics, and multimodal understanding, translating empirical findings into measurable improvements that shape what models can fundamentally do. These roles sit at the intersection of research and systems engineering within small, talent-dense teams, where they work cross-functionally to ensure that raw model intelligence becomes aligned, safe, and deployable at scale—balancing theoretical innovation with pragmatic delivery against real-world constraints.

$ titles --canonical
Member of Technical StaffMTSSenior Member of Technical StaffStaff Member of Technical StaffMember of Technical Staff - Pre-TrainingMember of Technical Staff - Post-Training
Open Jobs59
Companies Hiring23
$02

Skills

What companies are looking for in this role.

$ skills --core

Designing and implementing large-scale data processing pipelines for machine learning training

95%

Developing methods for data quality assessment, validation, and filtering at scale

92%

Working across the full machine learning pipeline from data preparation through model deployment

90%

Translating research insights into production-grade, maintainable code systems

88%

Building and optimizing training recipes including optimization strategies, learning rates, and hyperparameter tuning

88%

Implementing and debugging distributed training systems across multiple GPUs and nodes

87%

Designing experiments with rigorous methodology and unbiased outcome measurement

85%

Diagnosing and resolving training instabilities, convergence issues, and failure modes

82%

Developing evaluation frameworks and metrics to assess model capabilities and quality

80%

Conducting mathematical reasoning about model training behavior and scaling laws

78%

Optimizing throughput, storage, and compute utilization across distributed systems

75%

Building and maintaining reproducible experiment tracking systems with versioning and metadata management

75%

Building CI/CD and automation tooling to reduce friction in development workflows

70%

Working with real-world robotic systems, simulation environments, and hardware integration

60%
$ skills --emerging

Developing post-training pipelines including supervised fine-tuning, preference learning, and safety alignment

85%

Implementing reinforcement learning and preference optimization techniques for model alignment

82%

Developing synthetic data generation and evaluation strategies for training signal at scale

80%

Designing data mixture strategies and domain adaptation approaches for multi-domain training

78%

Designing and implementing multimodal model architectures spanning vision, language, audio, and video

72%

Adapting foundation models to specialized use cases and customer requirements

70%

Conducting research on frontier topics and publishing findings in peer-reviewed venues

68%

Building high-throughput fine-tuning and evaluation infrastructure for rapid iteration

68%

Developing and validating approaches for assessing and mitigating AI system risks

65%

Designing and executing 3D/4D scene representations and world models for embodied AI

62%
$ skills --soft

Collaborating across functional teams including researchers, engineers, product, and infrastructure

88%

Taking ownership of end-to-end projects from conception through production deployment

87%

Communicating complex technical concepts clearly to diverse audiences

85%

Prioritizing high-impact work and making pragmatic technical trade-offs under constraints

82%
$03

Technology

The tools and technologies that define this role.

$ tech --language
Pythonvery high
C++moderate
$ tech --framework
PyTorchvery high
Raymoderate
Sparkmoderate
DeepSpeedlow
JAXlow
Megatronlow
$ tech --platform
CUDAhigh
AWSlow
Google Cloudlow
Hugging Facelow
Kuberneteslow
$ tech --tool
Airflowmoderate
Gitmoderate
Dockerlow
TensorBoardlow
vLLMlow
Weights & Biaseslow
$ tech --concept
LLMvery high
Distributed Traininghigh
DPOhigh
Reinforcement Learninghigh
RLHFhigh
SFThigh
Transformerhigh
Vision-Language Modelshigh
Diffusion Modelsmoderate
Flow Modelsmoderate
Latent Diffusionmoderate
Speech-to-Speechmoderate
Tokenizationmoderate
World Modelsmoderate
3D Reconstructionlow
SLAMlow
$04

Open Jobs

59 open Member of Technical Staff jobs across 23 companies.

Reka AI3d
Member of Technical Staff- Data Intelligence
US, UK, Singapore, Remote·Research & Science
Cognition1w
Research, Mid-Training
San Francisco·Research & Science
Thinking Machines Lab1w
Research, Pre-Training Data
San Francisco·Research & Science
Reka AI1w
Member of Technical Staff - Robotics Research Lead
UK·Research & Science
xAI1w
Member of Technical Staff - Post-Training and RL
Palo Alto, CA·Research & Science
xAI1w
Member of Technical Staff - Model Training
Austin, TX; New York, NY; Palo Alto, CA; Seattle, WA·Research & Science
Poolside1w
Member of Engineering (Reinforcement Learning)
Remote (EMEA/East Coast)·Research & Science
xAI2w
Member of Technical Staff - Voice Model
Palo Alto, CA·Research & Science
OpenAI2w
Researcher, Agentic Post-Training
San Francisco·Research & Science
Aleph Alpha2w
Senior AI Researcher - Pre-training (f/m/d)
Heidelberg·Research & Science
Black Forest Labs2w
Member of Technical Staff - VLM
Freiburg (Germany)·Research & Science
Black Forest Labs2w
Member of Technical Staff - Post Training
Freiburg (Germany)·Research & Science
Black Forest Labs2w
Member of Technical Staff - Pretraining
Freiburg (Germany)·Research & Science
xAI2w
Member of Technical Staff - Multimodal Understanding
Palo Alto, CA·Research & Science
Perplexity1mo
Member of Technical Staff (AI Policy and Strategic Initiatives)
San Francisco·Research & Science
Liquid AI1mo
Member of Technical Staff - Post Training, Applied (Vision)
San Francisco·Research & Science
Liquid AI1mo
Member of Technical Staff - Applied ML, RecSys
Boston·Research & Science
Liquid AI1mo
Member of Technical Staff - Post Training, Applied (Audio)
San Francisco·Research & Science
xAI1mo
Member of Technical Staff - Model Training
London, UK·Research & Science
DeepMind1mo
Research Engineer, Frontier Safety Risk Assessment
London, UK; New York City, New York, US; San Francisco, California, US·Research & Science