Research Engineer - Novel AI Platforms for Multiscale Alignment
Future of Life Organizations, Anywhere (Open Globally)
The role
Job Summary
The Alignment of Dynamical Cognitive Systems program seeks a Research Engineer to develop novel AI platforms addressing critical alignment challenges and practical LLM agents. Combining platform development with alignment research, this role requires expertise in agent-based systems and multi-objective optimization. You'll co-design and develop systems supporting safety research, internal tools, and community resources -- creating environments to shape multi-agent dynamics and implement cooperative AI architectures with robust alignment properties.
You'll also build technical infrastructure to investigate experimental AI alignment and control approaches while collaborating with researchers to bring theoretical approaches into practice. This position offers the chance to develop foundational technologies essential for promoting safety as AI capabilities rapidly advance.
What you will do
- Research and develop AI systems and platforms variously for: safety research, internal tooling, and safety community support
- Design and implement architectures for agent execution environments and interaction platforms
- Develop optimization algorithms for multi-objective and cooperative AI systems
- Create mechanisms for conflict resolution and preference aggregation in multi-agent settings
- Implement testing frameworks and example environments to validate theoretical approaches
- Build middleware components that facilitate secure and efficient agent communication
- Architect and develop reusable software components for AI alignment research
- Document system architectures, APIs, and implementation details
- Collaborate on technical publications and research presentations
- Contribute to both practical implementations and theoretical research in AI alignment
- Support the evaluation and refinement of research prototypes
What you need
- MS or PhD in Computer Science, AI, or related field (or equivalent experience)
- Experience with one or preferrably more of: dynamic plan recognition, activity recognition, dynamic multicriteria decision making, multi-agent systems, or AI builder platforms
- Strong programming skills in both Python and Java
- Demonstrated ability to relatively independently drive technical projects from concept to implementation
- Familiarity with techniques for AI alignment, control, safety, or related research areas
- Experience developing middleware, frameworks, or platforms