FirstPrinciples Holding Company

Research Scientist

• Improve Theo’s ability to produce scientifically sound, high-quality outputs in 2026;
• Introduce new ideas, methods, and approaches that meaningfully shift system performance;
• Bring deep domain expertise (PhD+ level) in one or more targeted research areas.
• Research, design, and test novel model architectures that combine academic literature, NLP, symbolic reasoning, and structured scientific workflows.
• Prototype and build embedding representations for physical concepts, mathematical objects, and logical structures, enabling models to reason over equations, abstractions, and scientific constraints rather than surface text alone.
• Investigate alternatives to transformer-based architectures and deliver concrete recommendations.
• Design and run targeted experiments to evaluate new architectural ideas, using empirical results to guide the development of next-generation model architectures.
• Develop reinforcement learning loops that enable models to run internal and independent thought experiments.
• Design and automate scalable data ingestion pipelines that aggregate scientific literature, metadata, equations, and experimental data.
• Create custom benchmarks to measure physical understanding, mathematical reasoning, and failure modes in scientific reasoning and abstraction.
• Refine and release curated datasets and baselines once internal validation is complete.
• Run and track model training jobs while managing compute usage and budget constraints.
• Design sandbox environments for controlled autonomous exploration.
• Build evaluation frameworks using visual and statistical tools to identify strengths and blind spots.
• Implement tests and guardrails that flag low-quality or unsafe outputs.
• Maintain internal issue tracking with clear failure modes and fixes.
• Work closely with engineers to ensure research is feasible and production-ready.
• Communicate technical trade-offs clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
• Present regular research updates tied to defined milestones.

Research Fellow