{"id":129035,"url":"https://alion.io/job/centific-principal-research-scientist-reinforcement-learning","title":"Principal Research Scientist, Reinforcement Learning","company":{"id":9945,"name":"Centific","domain":"centific.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/centific","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"services","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":{"grade":"C","score":63,"open_postings":69,"ghost_share":0.623,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":38,"computed_at":"2026-10-28T05:59:10Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Palo Alto, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":250000,"max":300000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":300000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":7,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Digital Twin","optional":false},{"name":"DPO","optional":false},{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"Function Calling","optional":false},{"name":"GRPO","optional":false},{"name":"Gymnasium","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Post-training","optional":false},{"name":"PPO","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"Reward Modeling","optional":false},{"name":"RLHF","optional":false},{"name":"TRL","optional":false},{"name":"Synthetic Data","optional":true},{"name":"Transformers","optional":true},{"name":"World Models","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-27T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-29","last_verified_at":"2026-10-28T21:14:16Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":62,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":1,"flags":["company_stale"],"days_open":62},"description":"About Centific\nCentific is a frontier AI data foundry that curates diverse, high-quality data, using our purpose-built technology platforms to empower the Magnificent Seven and our enterprise clients with safe, scalable AI deployment. Our team includes more than 150 PhDs and data scientists, along with more than 4,000 AI practitioners and engineers. We harness the power of an integrated solution ecosystem-comprising industry-leading partnerships and 1.8 million vertical domain experts in more than 230 markets-to create contextual, multilingual, pre-trained datasets; fine-tuned, industry-specific LLMs; and RAG pipelines supported by vector databases. Our zero-distance innovation™ solutions for GenAI can reduce GenAI costs by up to 80% and bring solutions to market 50% faster.\nOur mission is to bridge the gap between AI creators and industry leaders by bringing best practices in GenAI to unicorn innovators and enterprise customers. We aim to help these organizations unlock significant business value by deploying GenAI at scale, helping to ensure they stay at the forefront of technological advancement and maintain a competitive edge in their respective markets.\nAbout Job\nWhat You'll Do\nDesign simulation environments and digital twins for enterprise workflows\nPost-train LLM agents using RLHF, DPO, GRPO, PPO, and emerging methods\nBuild pipelines that convert human-labeled traces and verifiable signals into training data\nArchitect multi-turn, tool-using agents with closed learning loops\nDesign reward functions and verifiers that resist reward hacking and reflect real task outcomes\nSet the technical bar across the team - architecture, code review, engineering standards\nMentor researchers and engineers; drive technical direction through influence\nTranslate research into production; contribute to publications\nRequired Qualifications\nExperience & Education\n7+ years in ML/AI research or engineering; 3+ years at senior/staff level\nMS or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or related field (or equivalent)\n5+ years hands-on RL - environment design, reward engineering, policy optimization - with at least one production deployment\nLLM Post-Training\n3+ years fine-tuning LLMs with hands-on RL post-training (RLHF, DPO, GRPO, PPO)\nExpert-level implementation of RLHF pipelines, reward modeling (Bradley-Terry), DPO, and KTO\nWorking knowledge of modern post-training and rollout-serving libraries (TRL, veRL, OpenRLHF, SkyRL)\nAgent Engineering\nExperience building LLM-based agents: tool use, multi-turn reasoning, trajectory evaluation\nStrong Python and software engineering skills - comfortable building production pipelines, not just notebooks\nRL Foundations\nDeep expertise in MDPs, policy gradient methods (PPO, SAC), and temporal difference learning\nHands-on experience with Gymnasium-based environments and reward engineering (sparse vs. dense)\nPreferred Qualifications\nPublications at NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, COLM, or similar venues\nOpen-source contributions to post-training or agent frameworks (TRL, veRL, OpenRLHF, SkyRL)\nExperience with Offline RL (CQL, IQL), Model-based RL / World Models, or Hierarchical RL\nBackground in synthetic data generation, simulation, or world models\nDomain experience in healthcare, finance, logistics, or compliance\nDistributed training on GPU clusters\nWhy Join Centific\nLead the frontier. Shape a new discipline at the intersection of post-training, simulation, and enterprise AI.\nShip your science. See your research power real systems across healthcare, finance, and safety-critical operations.\nCollaborate with leaders. Work alongside NVIDIA, Microsoft, and the global AI community.\nBuild what matters. Create governed, compliant AI systems enterprises can actually trust.\nHow to Apply\nSend your CV, a description of a technically complex system you personally built or led, and (if applicable) your publication list or open-source contributions to:\n\nSubject: Senior Staff Research Scientist - RL\n$250k-$300k +\nCentific is an equal-opportunity employer. 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