{"id":14962,"url":"https://alion.io/job/hedra-research-engineer","title":"Research Engineer","company":{"id":4619,"name":"Hedra","domain":"hedra.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/hedra","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":3,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"}},"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"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":175000,"max":275000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":275000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"DeepSpeed","optional":false},{"name":"Embodied AI","optional":false},{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"FSDP","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Multimodal AI","optional":false},{"name":"Physical AI","optional":false},{"name":"Post-training","optional":false},{"name":"Pre-training","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Sim-to-Real","optional":false},{"name":"Vision-Language-Action","optional":false},{"name":"World Models","optional":false},{"name":"PPO","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-04-15T00:26:46Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-04-15","last_verified_at":"2026-10-16T16:06:47Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":184,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":184},"description":"Overview:\nHedra is a pioneering generative modeling company - first models to market - now building a Physical AI team to bring these models to real-world industry and economy use cases. As a Research Engineer on our Physical AI team, you will lead pre-training and post-training on action-conditioned world models, working hand-in-hand with industrial partners to close the loop between generative AI and physical systems. This is not a black-box applied role: your work will be published, your infrastructure will be serious, and your impact will be direct. If you want to work at the frontier of generative modeling and physical AI, this is the team.\nResponsibilities:\nDesign, implement, and run pre-training and post-training pipelines for action-conditioned world models and vision-language-action (VLA) models\n\nDevelop and refine training methodologies, including fine-tuning, reinforcement learning, and large-scale multimodal learning\n\nDesign and generate training and evaluation datasets from simulation, including environment setup, domain randomization, and sim-to-real transfer strategies\n\nBuild distributed training infrastructure using PyTorch, FSDP, and DeepSpeed\n\nWork with multimodal data pipelines involving video, sensory inputs, and action sequences\n\nEvaluate model performance using both benchmark datasets and real-world deployment metrics\n\nContributions research publications a plus\n\nCollaborate with industrial partners to adapt generative models for real-world physical AI applications\n\nQualifications:\nExperience with pre-training or post-training on large generative models (video, multimodal, or action-conditioned)\n\nHands-on proficiency with PyTorch and distributed training frameworks (FSDP, DeepSpeed)\n\nStrong fundamentals in machine learning, optimization, and large-scale data processing\n\nFamiliarity with VLMs, VLAs, or world models\n\nBackground in robotics, embodied AI, or sim-to-real transfer is a plus\n\nExperience with video understanding or temporal reasoning is a plus\n\nBS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related field\n\nBenefits:\nCompetitive compensation and equity\n\n401k (no match)\n\nHealthcare (Silver PPO Medical, Vision, Dental)\n\nLunch and snacks at the office\n\nWe encourage you to apply even if you don't fully meet all the listed requirements; we value potential and diverse perspectives, and your unique skills could be a great asset to our team.","description_format":"text","description_chars":2420,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["401k plan","Equity"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Generative Image","Generative Video","Generative Audio & Music"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-04-15T00:26:46Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":3,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.096,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":184,"expected_fill_days":20,"reasons":["conf:3","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":275000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/hedra-research-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/hedra-research-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-16T19:24:41Z","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":4885,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-17T00:00:00Z"}},"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":4619},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=4619"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fhedra-research-engineer"},{"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%2Fhedra-research-engineer"},{"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%2Fhedra-research-engineer"},{"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/hedra-research-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fhedra-research-engineer"}]}