{"id":231711,"url":"https://alion.io/job/cursor-research-scientist","title":"Research Scientist","company":{"id":16873,"name":"Cursor","domain":"cursor.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/cursor","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":93,"open_postings":114,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.096,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":90,"computed_at":"2026-10-30T05:48:23Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States","New York, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":160000,"max_usd":357000,"period":"year","method":"role_country_seniority_unknown","sample_n":4425},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-01-27T22:54:08Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-01-27","last_verified_at":"2026-10-30T16:04:33Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":275,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":274},"description":"SpaceX was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today, SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of making life multiplanetary and expanding consciousness to the stars.\nSpaceXSI is building Super Intelligence to help humanity understand the universe. Our teams are building the full Super Intelligence stack: from our Colossus supercomputers, to Grok models, to our suite of applications, including Grok Bot, Grok Build, Grok Imagine, Grok Voice, and X. We're creating a powerful flywheel where more compute trains better models, better models power more useful products, and what we learn from people using those products shapes what we build next.\nResearch Scientist\nSpaceXAI is building the future of coding. We train frontier coding agents and scale RL on real user data to make them increasingly effective.\nAbout the role\nWe’re looking for Research Scientists who can drive effective RL or mid-training research in a small-team setting. You’ll own ambiguous, hard research problems end-to-end: forming hypotheses, designing experiments, building the training/eval/data needed to test them, and pushing results into the next model. You should expect significantly more scope and autonomy than in other research labs.\nWhat you’ll do\nImprove our understanding of RL, what it takes to handle longer horizon tasks, and train with less compute\n\nTrain graders to improve performance on coding tasks with non-verifiable reward\n\nImprove the quality and difficulty of datapoints we use for training our models\n\nRealtime RL for coding agents\n\nYou may be a fit if\nYou have a deep background in RL and strong machine learning fundamentals\n\nYou’re an excellent programmer and software engineer\n\nYou can handle ambiguous research tasks with little guidance\n\nYou care a lot about data quality, and can dive into the data when appropriate\n\nYou are truth seeking, aiming to learn more about the science than proving your ideas are correct.","description_format":"text","description_chars":2079,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["AI Agents","Code Intelligence","AI Development Tools"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-05T09:47:03Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":10,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.373,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":275,"expected_fill_days":90,"reasons":["conf:2","velocity","win:tail","crowd:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-30T05:48:23Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/cursor-research-scientist","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/cursor-research-scientist.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-30T18:36:51Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":7757,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-31T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":16873},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=16873"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fcursor-research-scientist"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fcursor-research-scientist"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fcursor-research-scientist"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/cursor-research-scientist\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fcursor-research-scientist"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":231711}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"cursor.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":231711},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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