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Remote Research Engineer Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

$100K - $190K/yr

AI is a non-profit AI research institute working to ensure advanced AI is safe and beneficial for ... Both remote and in-person (Berkeley, CA or Singapore) are possible. We sponsor visas for in-person ...

Research Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site +1

$122K - $215K/yr

To learn more visit: www.waabi.ai As a Research Engineer, you will be at the forefront of advancing and deploying artificial intelligence algorithms for our self-driving vehicles. You will work ...

Research Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site +1

$122K - $215K/yr

To learn more visit: www.waabi.ai As a Research Engineer, you will be at the forefront of advancing and deploying artificial intelligence algorithms for our self-driving vehicles. You will work ...

Research Engineer - Search/IR Research Engineer (Focused on Search/IR) You'll own the search and ... N/A for Remote About Firecrawl Firecrawl is the easiest way to extract data from the web.

Research Engineer - Evals

San Francisco, CA · On-site +1

$160K - $240K/yr

Research Engineer - Evals You'll build the evaluation systems that tell us whether Firecrawl ... N/A for Remote About Firecrawl Firecrawl is the easiest way to extract data from the web.

On-site (some team members are remote, but this role is currently on-site) Industry: AI ... The Opportunity Our partner is hiring a Research Engineer to help scale the quality assurance (QA) ...

Research Engineer, Universes

San Francisco, CA · On-site +1

$500K - $850K/yr

About the Role We're looking for Research Engineers to help us build the next generation of training environments for capable and safe agentic AI. This role blends research and engineering ...

Research Engineer, AI

Redwood City, CA · On-site +1

$214K - $375K/yr

As a Research Engineer, you'll build the models and systems that define what AI can do in biology: foundation models, reasoning, reinforcement learning, and multi-agent systems at frontier scale.

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Remote Research Engineer information

See California salary details

$36.5K

$104.6K

$140.6K

How much do remote research engineer jobs pay per year?

As of Jun 16, 2026, the average yearly pay for remote research engineer in California is $104,624.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $102,600.00 and $102,600.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive in the Remote Research Engineer position, and why are they important?

A Remote Research Engineer typically needs a strong background in scientific research methods, programming, data analysis, and a relevant degree in engineering or a related field. Familiarity with statistical software, cloud-based collaboration tools, and experience with programming languages such as Python or MATLAB are often required, with additional certifications in machine learning or data science considered advantageous. Excellent written and verbal communication, problem-solving abilities, and self-motivation are key soft skills for success in remote environments. These competencies enable effective independent work, high-quality research output, and seamless collaboration within distributed teams.

What is a Remote Research Engineer job?

A Remote Research Engineer is a professional who conducts research and develops new technologies, algorithms, or solutions while working remotely. They typically work in fields like artificial intelligence, machine learning, software development, or scientific research. Their responsibilities include designing experiments, analyzing data, and collaborating with teams using digital communication tools. This role requires strong problem-solving skills, self-motivation, and proficiency in programming or research methodologies. Remote Research Engineers often contribute to cutting-edge advancements while maintaining flexibility in their work environment.

What are some unique challenges faced by Remote Research Engineers and how can they be overcome?

Remote Research Engineers often encounter challenges related to collaborating across different time zones, ensuring clear communication, and maintaining access to necessary data or computational resources. To overcome these issues, it's important to leverage project management tools, establish regular virtual meetings, and proactively document and share research findings with the team. Strong time management and self-discipline are also essential to balance deep-focus research tasks with collaborative discussions. Organizations usually provide virtual platforms and cloud infrastructure to support seamless work, but developing personal workflows for communication and resource access can further enhance effectiveness in the role.

What are the most commonly searched types of Research Engineer jobs in California? The most popular types of Research Engineer jobs in California are:
What job categories do people searching Remote Research Engineer jobs in California look for? The top searched job categories for Remote Research Engineer jobs in California are:
What cities in California are hiring for Remote Research Engineer jobs? Cities in California with the most Remote Research Engineer job openings:

Research Engineer

FAR.AI

On-site, Remote

$100K - $190K/yr

Full-time

Posted 23 days ago


Job description

About Us
FAR.AI is a non-profit AI research institute working to ensure advanced AI is safe and beneficial for everyone. Our mission is to facilitate breakthrough AI safety research, advance global understanding of AI risks and solutions, and foster a coordinated global response.
Since our founding in July 2022, we've grown to 40+ staff, published 40+ academic papers, and convened leading AI safety events. Our work is recognized globally, with publications at premier venues such as NeurIPS, ICML, and ICLR, and features in the Financial Times, Nature News and MIT Technology Review. We conduct pre-deployment testing on behalf of frontier developers such as OpenAI and independent evaluations for governments including the EU AI Office. We help steer and grow the AI safety field through developing research roadmaps with renowned researchers such as Yoshua Bengio; running FAR.Labs, an AI safety-focused co-working space in Berkeley housing 40 members; and supporting the community through targeted grants to technical researchers.
About FAR.Research
We explore promising research directions in AI safety and scale up only those showing a high potential for impact. Once the core research problems are solved, we work to scale them to a minimum viable prototype, demonstrating their validity to AI companies and governments to drive adoption.
We are aiming to rapidly grow our team in the following areas especially, at varying levels of seniority:
  • Evals and red-teaming: Conducting pre- and post-release adversarial evaluations of frontier models (e.g. Claude 4 Opus, ChatGPT Agent, GPT-5); developing novel attacks to support this work; and exploring new threat models (e.g. persuasion, tampering risks).
  • Infrastructure: Maintaining GPU compute infrastructure to support experiments with open-weight models and developing new tooling to allow our research teams to scale their fine-tuning and post-training workflows to frontier open-weight models.

We are also seeking more senior candidates in the following research areas:
  • Mitigating AI deception: Studying when lie detectors induce honesty or evasion, and developing model organisms for deception and sandbagging
  • Adversarial Robustness: Working to rigorously solve these security problems through building a science of security and robustness for AI, from demonstrating superhuman systems can be vulnerable, to scaling laws for robustness and jailbreaking constitutional classifiers
  • Mechanistic Interpretability: Finding issues with Sparse Autoencoders, probing deception using AmongUs, understanding learned planning in SokoBan and interpretable data attribution.

FAR.AI is one of the largest independent AI safety research institutes, and is rapidly growing with the goal of diversifying and deepening our research portfolio. We would welcome the opportunity to add new research directions if you are a senior researcher with a strong vision and would like to pitch us on it.
About the Role
We organize our team as Members of Technical Staff, with significant overlap between scientist and engineer roles. As an engineer, you will develop scalable implementations of machine learning algorithms and use them to run scientific experiments. You can contribute to open source codebases such as Pytorch, HuggingFace Transformers and Accelerate. You will receive engineering mentorship via code review, pair programming and regular 1-to-1s. Alongside the scientists, you will be involved in the write-up of results and credited as an author in papers.
You are encouraged to develop your research taste, proposing novel directions and joining a research pod which suits your interests. You are welcome to take time to study and to attend conferences free of charge. Our technical team is organized into research pods to enable continuity of organizational structure whilst each pod can pivot through varied research projects.
Beyond FAR.AI, you can work with national AI safety institutes, frontier model developers and top academics.
About You
It is essential that you:
  • Have significant software engineering experience or experience applying machine learning methods. Evidence of this may include prior work experience, open-source contributions, or academic publications.
  • Have experience with at least one object-oriented programming language (preferably Python).
  • Are results-oriented and motivated by impactful research.

It is preferable that you have experience with some of the following:
  • Common ML frameworks like PyTorch or TensorFlow.
  • Natural language processing or reinforcement learning.
  • Operating system internals and distributed systems.
  • Publications or open-source software contributions.
  • Basic linear algebra, calculus, probability, and statistics.

We encourage applications from strong software engineers who are new to ML, and from academics without industrial experience in software engineering.
Logistics
If based in the USA or Singapore, you will be an employee of FAR.AI (501(c)(3) research non-profit / non-profit CLG). Outside the USA or Singapore, you will be employed via an EOR organisation on behalf of FAR.AI or as a contractor.
  • Location: Both remote and in-person (Berkeley, CA or Singapore) are possible. We sponsor visas for in-person employees, and can hire remotely in most countries.
  • Hours: Full-time (40 hours/week).
  • Compensation: $100,000-$190,000/year depending on experience and location. We will also pay for work-related travel and equipment expenses. We offer catered lunch and dinner at our offices in Berkeley.
  • Application process: A 72-minute programming assessment, two interviews with members of our technical staff, and a paid work trial lasting up to 1 week. If you are not available for a work trial we may be able to find alternative ways of testing your fit.

If you have any questions about the role, please do get in touch at talent@far.ai.
Otherwise, if you don't have questions, the best way to ensure a proper review of your skills and qualifications is by applying directly via the application form. Please don't email us to share your resume (it won't have any impact on our decision). Thank you!