{"id":84138,"url":"https://alion.io/job/decagon-research-engineer-2","title":"Research Engineer","company":{"id":48029,"name":"Decagon","domain":"decagon.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/decagon-ai","size_band":"501-1000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":85,"open_postings":68,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.618,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":52,"computed_at":"2026-10-24T06:02:35Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"junior","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":{"min":200000,"max":400000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":400000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":2,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Post-training","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-07-22T16:46:44Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-07-22","last_verified_at":"2026-10-24T18:52:33Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":94,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":[],"days_open":93},"description":"About Decagon\nDecagon is the leading conversational AI platform empowering every brand to deliver concierge customer experiences.\nOur technology enables industry-defining enterprises like Avis Budget Group, Block’s Cash App and Square, Chime, Oura Health, and Hunter Douglas to deploy AI agents that power personalized, deeply satisfying interactions across voice, chat, email, SMS, and every other channel.\nWe’re building a future where customer experiences are being redefined from support tickets and hold music to faster resolutions, richer conversations, and deeper relationships. We’re proud to be backed by world-class investors who share that vision, including a16z, Accel, Bain Capital Ventures, Coatue, and Index Ventures, along with many others.\nWe’re an in-office company, driven by a shared commitment to excellence and velocity. Our values - Just Get It Done, Invent What Customers Want, Winner’s Mindset, and The Polymath Principle - shape how we work and grow as a team.\nAbout the Team\nRead more about the research team's work here: https://decagon.ai/blog/introducing-decagon-labs\nThe Research team develops the model and decision-making stack that powers Decagon’s conversational agents for enterprise support. We research, adapt, and implement state-of-the-art techniques in model training, prompting, orchestration, and evaluation in order to make our agents more accurate, robust, and efficient in real-world deployments.\nOur goal is to push the frontier of applied conversational AI: agents that reliably understand nuanced intent, track long context, and take the right actions under uncertainty. We measure success the way customers feel it: higher resolution rates, better user satisfaction, and consistent behavior at scale.\nAbout the Role\nAs a Research Engineer, you’ll be responsible for building industry-leading conversational AI models that power Decagon’s agent, and taking them all the way from idea to production. You’ll own multi-quarter initiatives that push the agent’s reliability, capability, and efficiency forward, and you’ll design and implement frontier approaches for training, evaluation, and orchestration across the system.\nWe’re looking for strong engineers who want to build the core models and algorithms behind our AI agents. People here own their work end-to-end, ship real improvements, and are trusted to make high-impact technical decisions.\nIn this role, you will\nLead research and engineering efforts to improve core conversational capabilities in production, including instruction following, retrieval, memory, and long-horizon task completion\n\nBuild and iterate on end-to-end models and pipelines that optimize for quality, efficiency, and user experience\n\nPartner with platform and product engineers to integrate new models into production systems\n\nBreak down ambiguous research ideas into clear, iterative milestones and roadmaps.\n\nYour background looks something like this\n2+ years of experience in AI/ML engineering or research.\n\nPrior experience post-training and deploying LLMs in production environments.\n\nFluency in Python and modern ML tooling (training, evaluation, data pipelines)\n\nTrack record of taking research ideas from prototype → reliable, measurable production impact\n\nCompensation\n$200K - $400K + Offers Equity\nThis range reflects the expected compensation for this role. Compensation within the range is determined based on experience, skills, and the scope of responsibilities, with flexibility for candidates who demonstrate exceptional impact.\nIn addition to base salary, we offer competitive equity. Final compensation may vary based on location within the United States.\nBenefits\nWe proudly offer the following benefits for our full-time employees:\nMedical, Dental, and Vision benefits for you and your family\n\nLife Insurance and Disability Benefits\n\nRetirement Plan (e.g., 401K, pension)\n\nParental Leave\n\nFertility and family building benefits through Carrot\n\nMonthly stipend to support your wellness, lifestyle, and work-life balance\n\nDaily lunches and snacks in the office to keep you at your best\n\nTake what you need vacation policy (subject to local requirements; UK employees receive 25 days of statutory leave)\n\nThese benefits are described in more detail in Decagon’s policies, may vary by location, and can change at any time according to applicable compensation and benefits plans.","description_format":"text","description_chars":4376,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":2,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["401k plan","Equity","Life insurance","Parental leave","Retirement plans"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Conversational AI","AI Agents","Customer Support & Help Desk Software"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-07-22T16:46:44Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 32","filings_12m":32,"filings_prev_12m":4,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":262500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":15}],"liveness":{"score":14,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.378,"p_room":0.36,"age_days":93,"expected_fill_days":52,"reasons":["conf:3","stale_co","velocity","win:tail","crowd:junior,brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-24T06:02:35Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":400000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/decagon-research-engineer-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/decagon-research-engineer-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-24T20:19:14Z","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":29675,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-25T00:00:00Z"}},"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":48029},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=48029"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fdecagon-research-engineer-2"},{"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%2Fdecagon-research-engineer-2"},{"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%2Fdecagon-research-engineer-2"},{"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/decagon-research-engineer-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fdecagon-research-engineer-2"}]}