kadence · 1 month ago
Research Scientist
San Francisco Bay Area
Full-time
Onsite
New Grad, Entry Level
$0/yr - $250K/yr
0+ years expKadence is a seed-stage AI company focused on evaluating and benchmarking large language models for enterprise tasks. The Research Scientist will develop benchmarks and evaluation methodologies, influencing model selection and safety decisions in various high-impact environments.
Hiring Manager
Morgan Cioeta
Responsibilities
Evaluate newly released models as they launch (e.g., Gemini, DeepSeek, etc.)
Run large-scale assessment workflows using internal evaluation infrastructure
Compare model performance across enterprise-grade task categories
Identify high-value model application domains through research exploration
Construct datasets, including labeling strategy and workforce coordination
Write short “white-paper-style” summaries explaining benchmark purpose, method, and findings
Improve systems for scoring generated text beyond standard metrics
Explore research in reference-free, rubric-based, and human-aligned evaluation
Develop new techniques for reliability, consistency, and repeatability
Work closely with engineering to scale evaluation infra
Partner with customers to refine evaluation relevance and task fit
Influence product direction through research insights
Qualification
Required
0–3 years post-grad experience (Master's, PhD, or equivalent applied research)
Publications, preprints, or demos showing cutting-edge work
Experience with diffusion models, NLP, multimodal, or benchmarking work
Ability to operate independently with ambiguity
Clean, maintainable research codebases
Candidates from: top engineering/research universities, applied AI startups, well-regarded research internships
Built or contributed to a benchmark or evaluation methodology
Experience in enterprise task model evaluation
Stanford / top lab adjacency (per their historical hiring success)
Preferred
Wants to publish as primary motivation
Purely academic with slow timelines
Big-tech culture fit concerns (Meta / Google / Salesforce specifically noted—but case-by-case)
Benefits
Health & dental coverage
Lunch + dinner provided
Snacks & coffee
Unlimited PTO
Weekly happy hours with community guests
Team events (bowling, hiking, rock climbing, etc.)
Swag program (hats, etc.)
Company
kadence
Kadence - We place elite AI talent at the intersection of science & engineering, from PHD to Executive.
2-10 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Early StageCompany data provided by crunchbase