{"id":177870,"url":"https://alion.io/job/primary-index-research-engineer-ai","title":"Research Engineer – AI","company":{"id":65575,"name":"Primary","domain":"theprimary.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/primary-index","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":null},"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":["United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":150000,"max":null,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":150000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-07-13T10:50:19Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-07-13","last_verified_at":"2026-10-23T15:25:25Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":102,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":101},"description":"About Primary\nFar too few of the world's best journalists get the recognition, audience, or rewards their work deserves. Primary is building the infrastructure to change that. Primary Index is the first AI-native ranking system for journalism - the credibility standard for news in the AI economy. We evaluate individual journalists on the accuracy, depth, and craft of their published work through a purpose-built AI operating against a transparent, published methodology. Building an AI system that can faithfully assess factuality, evidence quality, source reliability, and editorial balance at scale - faithfully enough to earn the trust of journalists and the public - is a genuinely hard problem that requires new methods, not the application of existing ones. That is the work of this team.\nWe are seeking a Research Engineer to help design, build, evaluate and deploy the next generations of AI systems for automated knowledge acquisition and evaluation.\nYou will work closely with the Chief Scientist on research and development spanning large language models, automated reasoning, knowledge acquisition, and high-throughput AI systems. Rather than applying existing AI techniques to business problems, you will help invent, implement and evaluate new approaches.\nCurrent projects include:\nlarge-scale local inference over news and other text corpora;\n\nAI systems that assess factuality, neutrality, use of evidence and source quality;\n\nfaithful explanation and justification generation;\n\nlarge-scale evaluation and scoring of published journalism;\n\nadaptation and fine-tuning of open-weight language models;\n\nnew methods for evaluating and improving AI systems.\n\nOverview\nThis is a research-oriented role in which AI-assisted software development is expected. The emphasis is on technical judgement, problem solving and independent research rather than proficiency with particular implementation tools or frameworks.\nWe value intellectual independence and ambition within a team. We are looking for researchers who enjoy taking loosely specified problems, identifying the key research questions, formulating new approaches, and critically evaluating evidence. The ability to reason well, learn rapidly, understand and make suggestions, and exercise sound technical judgement is more important than familiarity with any particular software framework.\nResponsibilities\nYou will:\ntranslate high-level research ideas into working AI systems;\n\nidentify relevant literature and implement or extend state-of-the-art methods;\n\ndesign and carry out experiments to evaluate alternative approaches;\n\ndevelop new algorithms, objectives and evaluation methods where appropriate;\n\neffectively employ and critically evaluate AI-based software development tools;\n\nbuild robust, scalable research prototypes;\n\ncommunicate results clearly through technical reports and research papers.\n\nEssential qualifications\nYou should demonstrate:\na strong background across artificial intelligence, machine learning or computational cognitive systems;\n\nthe ability to independently design and build sophisticated AI systems;\n\nexcellent analytical and experimental skills;\n\nthe ability to rapidly understand and extend new research;\n\nstrong technical judgement and intellectual independence;\n\nexcellent written and spoken communication.\n\nA PhD is desirable but not essential. Outstanding candidates with an MSc or equivalent experience are encouraged to apply.\nEvidence of suitability\nWe are interested in evidence that you can independently transform research ideas into effective AI systems. Evidence of suitability includes one or more of:\nfirst-author or substantial contributor research publications;\n\nsubstantial AI research projects;\n\nopen-source AI software;\n\nnovel machine learning methods;\n\nsignificant technical contributions to research systems;\n\ndemonstrated ability to rapidly understand and extend unfamiliar AI systems.\n\nWhat will distinguish outstanding candidates\nOutstanding candidates will be able to take a broad research direction-for example,\n“Investigate whether a ranking-based loss, alternative supervision strategy, or architectural modification could improve factuality scoring while producing faithful explanations.”\n-and independently:\nformulate promising approaches;\n\nidentify relevant prior work;\n\ndesign appropriate experiments;\n\nbuild and evaluate candidate systems;\n\ninterpret results critically;\n\nrecommend the most promising direction.\n\nResearch environment\nYou will work closely with experienced AI researchers in an ambitious, high-velocity startup on problems at the intersection of language models, reasoning, knowledge acquisition and trustworthiness. Our objective is to build AI systems that materially advance the state of the art while rapidly delivering real-world impact. Successful work is expected to result in both rapid deployment in production and publication at leading AI conferences.\nCompensation & Structure\nCompensation: $150,000+ cash compensation plus generous equity package, depending on experience and seniority\n\nNew York City-based role, working in person with the research team\n\nMeaningful equity grants and an annual performance bonus\n\nComprehensive benefits, including health, dental, and vision\n\nWe will calibrate seniority and scope to the right candidate","description_format":"text","description_chars":5304,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"phd","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Artificial Intelligence","Digital Media","Online Reviews & Ratings"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-08-31T01:32:49Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":7,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.237,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":101,"expected_fill_days":23,"reasons":["conf:0","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-23T05:54:15Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":150000,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/primary-index-research-engineer-ai","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/primary-index-research-engineer-ai.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-23T18:16:56Z","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":27858,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-24T00:00:00Z"}},"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":65575},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=65575"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fprimary-index-research-engineer-ai"},{"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%2Fprimary-index-research-engineer-ai"},{"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%2Fprimary-index-research-engineer-ai"},{"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/primary-index-research-engineer-ai\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fprimary-index-research-engineer-ai"}]}