A1 · 1 day ago
VP of Research, Machine Learning
Palo Alto, CA
Full-time
Hybrid
Director/ExecutiveA1 is building a proactive AI system that goes beyond responding to prompts, and they are seeking a VP of Research to own the research and intelligence direction of this system. The role involves defining how AI reasons, evaluates, and improves in a high-frequency product, while setting the research direction and guiding exploration of frontier techniques.
Computer Software
Responsibilities
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
Qualification
Required
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
Company
A1
A1 is research and product group focused on building essential, next-gen applications that benefits the wider society, not the exclusive few.
Founded in 2025Malaysia, MY
11-50 employeesFunding
Current Stage
Early StageCompany data provided by crunchbase