FirstPrinciples · 4 months ago
Member of Technical Staff, Research
United States
Full-time
Remote
Senior LevelFirstPrinciples is a non-profit organization dedicated to building an autonomous AI Physicist to explore the fundamental laws of our universe. The Member of Technical Staff, Research will investigate and develop state of the art methods for AI integration into scientific research, collaborating with teams to enhance the capabilities of the AI engine being developed.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)Non Profit
Responsibilities
Research, design, and test novel, research‑specific model architectures that integrate academic literature, natural language processing (NLP), symbolic reasoning, and other methods to orchestrate the scientific process
Prototype and build custom tokenizers for LaTeX symbols and physical units to be treated as tokens
Explore alternatives to transformers through in-depth research and provide practical recommendations for model development
Develop reinforcement-learning loops to enable models to run independent and internal thought experiments
Design and automate data ingestion pipelines in collaboration with our Data Scientists & Engineers that aggregates science literature, metadata, experimental data, equations and other data sources in a robust and scalable manner
Establish custom benchmarks to assess the models’ understanding of physical concepts, mathematical reasoning abilities, and ability to minimize hallucinations for the benefit of scientific reliability
Refine and release datasets and baselines once internal tests are stable
Run and track model training jobs while leading the technical team through set-up, monitoring progress, and constraining costs within budget
Develop approaches to stage 'practice runs' in a sandbox environment to develop the model’s abilities to explore ideas independently while logging results for later review
Develop a framework to evaluate the models’ learning using visual and statistical tools to spot patterns and blind spots
Add guard-rails and tests that flag poor quality model output
Maintain internal tools to track lists of known issues, noting failures, clear fixes, and improvements to be integrated into future development
Work with the engineering team to ensure product feasibility and robust architecture
Translate technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders in clear terms
Present findings in clear updates to the technical team in order to keep the broader team appraised of progress against research milestones
Qualification
Required
Educational Background: PhD in physics, computer science, data science, information systems, or related field
Experience: Proven track record of conducting in-depth research on scientific AI models, symbolic models, machine learning or deep learning for scientific discovery
Technical Skills: Familiarity with SOTA models, best practices in model development processes, in-depth AI/ML concepts, and data infrastructure
Collaboration & Communication: Comfort working closely with engineers and other technical team members
Strong written and verbal communication skills
Comfortable working in a startup-style, cross-functional, remote team
Preferred
Has experience with or strong interest in physics and/or fundamental science topics
Experience conducting research on AI models in an early-stage or mission-focused environment
Company
FirstPrinciples
Building AI to understand the nature of reality.
Founded in 2024
11-50 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Early StageCompany data provided by crunchbase