VP of Research – Machine Learning
BJAK
full-time
Posted on:
Location Type: Remote
Location: United States
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Job Level
About the role
- Own the research and intelligence direction of this system.
- Define how AI reasons, evaluates, and improves in a product used with high frequency.
- Set and evolve the research direction for A1’s core intelligence, including context representation, memory, reasoning, planning, and orchestration.
- Decide when to design new model architectures versus adapting or leveraging frontier open-source or commercial models.
- Define evaluation frameworks that measure real-world usefulness, robustness, safety, and long-term behavior – not benchmark vanity.
- Own alignment, safety, and guardrail strategy as first-class product concerns.
- Guide exploration of frontier techniques such as retrieval-augmented training, mixture-of-experts, distillation, multi-agent orchestration, multimodal systems.
- Shape early product intelligence direction in close partnership with product and application engineering.
- Set the technical bar for research rigor, judgment, and taste across the organization.
Requirements
- Deep experience building or evolving real machine learning systems used in production.
- Strong technical judgment around model behavior, failure modes, and long-horizon trade-offs.
- A builder’s mindset: you care about systems that work in the real world, not just ideas.
- Comfortable making irreversible or high-impact decisions with incomplete information.
- Obsession with evaluation, correctness, and how systems behave over time.
- High ownership mentality — you operate as a founder, not a manager.
- If you are looking to focus primarily on publishing, incremental benchmarks, or managing a large research organization, this role will not be a fit.
Applicant Tracking System Keywords
Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.
Hard Skills & Tools
machine learningmodel architecturesevaluation frameworkscontext representationmemoryreasoningplanningorchestrationretrieval-augmented trainingmulti-agent orchestration
Soft Skills
technical judgmentbuilder's mindsetdecision-makingevaluation obsessionhigh ownership mentality