Staff Research Scientist - Reinforcement Learning

Centific Open

Remote United States Full-time Senior AI Research

At a glance

Senior AI Research role at Centific. Remote, United States · full-time · $200,000–$250,000 base.

SalaryStated by Centific

$200,000 – $250,000

Base salary for this role, in USD per year, as published in the posting.

RoleAI Research

SenioritySenior

LocationUnited States

WorkplaceRemote

EmploymentFull-time

Base pay$200,000–$250,000

PostedJul 2, 2026

Role brief

remoteroles summary, based on the employer's posting.

What you'll do

Create simulated enterprise workflows and digital replicas for agent training
Train language-model agents with human feedback, preference optimization and other reinforcement-learning methods
Turn human-labeled trajectories and verifiable outcomes into data pipelines for training
Build agents that use tools across multiple turns, with feedback loops and rewards tied to task results
Set engineering standards, review code, mentor teammates and move research into production

What you bring

At least seven years in ML or AI research or engineering, including three years at senior or staff level
A master's or doctoral degree in computer science, machine learning or a related area, or equivalent experience
Five years of hands-on RL work in environment design, reward engineering and policy optimization, including a production deployment
At least three years fine-tuning language models through reinforcement-learning post-training

Who this fits

This senior role suits someone who can guide technical direction while building production reinforcement-learning systems. You'll mentor researchers and engineers and bring research into deployed products. The role is remote in the United States.

From the employer

About Centific

Centific 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.

Our 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.

About Job

About Centific

About Job

What You'll Do

Design simulation environments and digital twins for enterprise workflows
Post-train LLM agents using RLHF, DPO, GRPO, PPO, and emerging methods
Build pipelines that convert human-labeled traces and verifiable signals into training data
Architect multi-turn, tool-using agents with closed learning loops
Design reward functions and verifiers that resist reward hacking and reflect real task outcomes
Set the technical bar across the team — architecture, code review, engineering standards
Mentor researchers and engineers; drive technical direction through influence
Translate research into production; contribute to publications

Required Qualifications

Experience & Education

7+ years in ML/AI research or engineering; 3+ years at senior/staff level
MS or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or related field (or equivalent)
5+ years hands-on RL — environment design, reward engineering, policy optimization — with at least one production deployment

LLM Post-Training

3+ years fine-tuning LLMs with hands-on RL post-training (RLHF, DPO, GRPO, PPO)
Expert-level implementation of RLHF pipelines, reward modeling (Bradley-Terry), DPO, and KTO
Working knowledge of modern post-training and rollout-serving libraries (TRL, veRL, OpenRLHF, SkyRL)

Agent Engineering

Experience building LLM-based agents: tool use, multi-turn reasoning, trajectory evaluation
Strong Python and software engineering skills — comfortable building production pipelines, not just notebooks

RL Foundations

Deep expertise in MDPs, policy gradient methods (PPO, SAC), and temporal difference learning
Hands-on experience with Gymnasium-based environments and reward engineering (sparse vs. dense)

Preferred Qualifications

Publications at NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, COLM, or similar venues
Open-source contributions to post-training or agent frameworks (TRL, veRL, OpenRLHF, SkyRL)
Experience with Offline RL (CQL, IQL), Model-based RL / World Models, or Hierarchical RL
Background in synthetic data generation, simulation, or world models
Domain experience in healthcare, finance, logistics, or compliance
Distributed training on GPU clusters

Why Join Centific

Lead the frontier. Shape a new discipline at the intersection of post-training, simulation, and enterprise AI.
Ship your science. See your research power real systems across healthcare, finance, and safety-critical operations.
Collaborate with leaders. Work alongside NVIDIA, Microsoft, and the global AI community.
Build what matters. Create governed, compliant AI systems enterprises can actually trust.

Salary: $200k-$250k

How to Apply

Send 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:

diana.moeck@centific.com

Subject: Senior Staff Research Scientist – RL