Research Scientist, Scaling RL

Periodic Labs · Menlo Park, CA

RoleLantern checked

ResearchCompany career page

The apply link worked recently (not employer-confirmed).

Role summary

Periodic Labs seeks a Research Scientist to advance reinforcement learning algorithms for frontier AI models in materials and energy discovery. The role involves designing scaling experiments, developing improved RL algorithms, and translating research findings to large-scale production training runs.

What they're looking for

5+ years hands-on experience training language models with reinforcement learning
Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience in relevant field
Strong scientific rigor and attention to detail in experimental design
Ability to design small-scale RL experiments that transfer to large-scale settings
Proficiency working across complex machine learning training stacks

What you'll be doing

Design experiments studying RL performance scaling across compute, model size, data, and reward quality
Develop improved RL algorithms for policy optimization, exploration, and credit assignment in long-horizon tasks
Build adaptive sampling and curriculum learning methods that dynamically adjust task difficulty and training parameters
Investigate training stability issues including importance-sampling corrections and policy staleness mitigation
Optimize compute efficiency through systematic hyperparameter experimentation and infrastructure improvements

Compensation$250,000-$350,000 base + equity

Privacy & handoff

This role links to Periodic Labs's own application system. RoleLantern records your interest and checks the link, but the application happens on the employer's site and status updates may not come back to us. Clicking apply does not mark you as applied automatically.

What RoleLantern checked

This role is listed from an approved source. RoleLantern checks that the application link is live and how recently the role appeared — the employer has not confirmed it directly on RoleLantern.

RoleLantern checked active

RoleLantern checkedNeeds clarity

Date postedToday

Last source checkToday

Salary listedNeeds clarity

Location clearClear

Something look off? Let us know and we may ask the employer to verify it.

See how you match this role

Upload your CV to see which of this role's requirements your background supports, where there may be gaps, and what needs clarification. Private by default — we never sell your CV.

See my match