AI Research Engineer

About Phaidra

Phaidra is building the future of industrial automation.

The world today is filled with static, monolithic infrastructure. Factories, power plants, buildings, etc. operate the same they've operated for decades — because the controls programming is hard-coded. Thousands of lines of rules and heuristics that define how the machines interact with each other. The result of all this hard-coding is that facilities are frozen in time, unable to adapt to their environment while their performance slowly degrades.

Phaidra creates AI-powered control systems for the industrial sector, enabling industrial facilities to automatically learn and improve over time. Specifically:

• We use reinforcement learning algorithms to provide this intelligence, converting raw sensor data into high-value actions and decisions.
• We focus on industrial applications, which tend to be well-sensorized with measurable KPIs — perfect for reinforcement learning.
• We enable domain experts (our users) to configure the AI control systems (i.e. agents) without writing code. They define what they want their AI agents to do, and we do it for them.

Our team has a track record of applying AI to some of the toughest problems. From achieving superhuman performance with DeepMind's AlphaGo, to reducing the energy required to cool Google's Data Centers by 40%, we deeply understand AI and how to apply it in production for massive impact.

Phaidra’s ability to achieve its mission is determined by our ability to work together — as defined by our core values: Transparency, Collaboration, Operational Excellence, Ownership, and Empathy. We seek individuals who embody these values, as they are instrumental in ensuring our team consistently delivers excellence and fosters an engaging and supportive culture

Phaidra is based in the USA, but we are 100% remote with no physical office. We hire employees internationally with the help of our partner, OysterHR. Our team is currently located throughout the USA, Canada, UK, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, and India.

Who You Are

Phaidra is looking for a creative and pragmatic Machine Learning Engineer to join our research team. You are passionate about bringing AI into the physical world and thrive at the intersection of theory and practical application. You will work closely with researchers, engineers, and customers to build, scale, and deploy intelligent systems in industrial environments.

You will have the opportunity to make immediate impact by helping design and implement learning-based control systems—pushing the boundaries of how AI interacts with complex, dynamic processes.

We are seeking a team member located within one of the following areas: UK, USA, or Canada.

• In the United States, we accept applicants located in the following states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington. 
• In Canada, we accept applicants located in the following provinces: Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta.

Responsibilities

The ideal candidate enjoys owning end-to-end workflows—from prototyping to production—and is comfortable navigating both model development and software engineering. Your work will include:

• Building robust ML pipelines for training, evaluation, and deployment of control algorithms.
• Working with researchers to implement cutting-edge methods in Deep Learning and Reinforcement Learning.
• Collaborating with software engineers to integrate models into real-time systems.
• Designing tools and infrastructure to support large-scale experimentation and iteration.
• Performing rigorous evaluations on simulation and real-world data, and tuning models for safety, performance, and robustness.
• Supporting reproducibility and code quality across the team.

Key Qualifications

• 1+ years of prior experience in applied machine learning or software engineering.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field.
• Proficiency in Python and experience with ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX.
• Strong foundations in supervised learning, reinforcement learning, or control systems.
• Familiarity with common tools for experimentation (e.g., Ray, MLFlow, WandB, or similar).
• Ability to write high-quality, testable, and maintainable code.
• Share our company values: Collaboration, Transparency, Operational Excellence, Ownership, and Empathy.

Preferred Skills & Experience

• Experience with Deep RL methods (e.g., PPO, SAC, DDPG, Model-Based RL).
• Familiarity with numerical optimization and physical modeling.
• Experience building infrastructure for experimentation, model serving, or data processing.
• Understanding of industrial systems and control theory is a strong plus.
• Exposure to distributed computing, cloud infrastructure (GCP, AWS), or containerization tools (Docker, Kubernetes)

Our Stack

• Python
• PyTorch, Ray, scikit-learn, numpy, pandas
• Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform
• GCP

Onboarding

In your first 30 days...

• You’ll complete onboarding and gain context on Phaidra’s product, infrastructure, and research directions.
• You’ll begin contributing to our ML libraries, experiment tooling, and data pipelines.
• You’ll review past experiments, training setups, and our codebase

By your first 60 days...

• You’ll take ownership of an ML pipeline or training experiment.
• You’ll work with researchers to implement and validate new learning algorithms.
• You’ll contribute to internal tooling that improves research velocity

By your first 90 days...

• You’ll have a model or pipeline running in production or simulation.
• You’ll have pushed significant improvements to our ML infra or core libraries.
• You’ll be fully embedded in the team, contributing ideas and helping shape the next phase of research.

General Interview Process

All of our interviews are held via Google Meet, and an active camera connection is required.

1. Meeting with People Operations team member (30 minutes)
2. Initial Meeting with Hiring Manager (30 minutes)
3. Technical Interview 1 (60 minutes)
4. Technical Interview 2 (60 minutes)
5. Culture fit interview with Phaidra’s co-founders (30 minutes)

Base Salary

• United States Residents
  • San Francisco/New York Metro: 112,000 USD - 168,000 USD
  • Other cities: 92,800 USD - 156,000 USD
• Canada Residents
  • Toronto/Vancouver: 106,400 CAD - 170,400 CAD
  • Other cities: 83,200 CAD - 136,800 CAD 
• UK Residents
  • 76,000 GBP - 114,000 GBP

This position will also include equity.

These are best faith estimates of the base salary range for this position. Multiple factors such as experience, education, level, and location are taken into account when determining compensation.

Benefits & Perks

• Fast-paced and team-oriented environment where you will be instrumental in the direction of the company.
• Phaidra is a 100% remote company with a digital nomad policy.
• Competitive compensation & equity.
• Outsized responsibilities & professional development.
• Training is foundational; functional, customer immersion, and development training.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance (exact benefits vary by region).
• Unlimited paid time off, with a minimum of 20 days off per year requirement.
• Paid parental leave (exact benefits vary by region).
• Home office setup allowance, coworking space stipend, and company MacBook.

*Please note that Phaidra’s benefits and perks listed above do not apply to temporary employees such as interns.

On being Remote

We are thoughtful about remote collaboration. We look to the pioneers - like Gitlab - for inspiration and best practices to create a stellar remote work environment. We have a documentation-first culture and actively practice asynchronous communication in everything we do. Our team stays connected through tools like Slack and video chat. We have dedicated all-hands meetings weekly to build strong relationships, and we hold virtual team building events as well as virtual socials. 

Equal Opportunity Employment

Phaidra is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Phaidra is governed on the basis of merit, competence, and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status. We welcome diversity and strive to maintain an inclusive environment for all employees. If you need assistance with completing the application process, please contact us at hiring@phaidra.ai.

E-Verify Notice

Phaidra participates in E-Verify, an employment authorization database provided through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Social Security Administration (SSA). As required by law, we will provide the SSA and, if necessary, the DHS, with information from each new employee’s Form I-9 to confirm work authorization for those residing in the United States.

Additional information about E-Verify can be found here.

#LI-Remote

WE DO NOT ACCEPT APPLICATIONS FROM RECRUITERS.