Research Scientist, Science of Post Training

About the Team

The Post-Training team is responsible for training and improving pre-trained models to be deployed into ChatGPT, the API, and future products. The team partners closely with research and product teams across the company, and conducts research as a final step to prepare for real world deployment to millions of users, ensuring that our models are safe, efficient, and reliable.

The Science of Post-training team is responsible for advancing the frontier of RLHF. We combine rigorous scientific experimentation with strong technical execution to drive progress in model alignment. Our goal is to develop insights that would make model training more robust and efficient. We contribute to core model deployments like GPT-4.1 and o3, but our main mandate is to pursue foundational research that will guide the trajectory of future model development.

About the Role

As a Research Scientist on the Science of Post-training team, you will be responsible for developing a theoretical and empirical understanding of post-training techniques. 

We’re looking for people with a background in reinforcement learning research, who can iterate quickly and bring a rigorous scientific lens to training production-scale models.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

• Design and execute experiments to study the mechanics and efficacy of RL algorithms

• Develop new theoretical frameworks to explain and predict behavior of post-training systems

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams on the deployment and evaluation of safe, aligned models in production

You might thrive in this role if:

• You have a strong foundation in computer science, statistics, machine learning, physics, robotics, or a similarly rigorous theoretical and empirical discipline

• You are excited to work at the intersection of scientific research and real-world deployment

• You value rapid iteration via simple, well-executed experimentation

• You are a strong programmer, who would feel comfortable engaging with low-level technical details

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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