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Research Fellowship Jobs (NOW HIRING)

LifeBridge Health

Research Fellow

Baltimore, MD · On-site

Research Fellow Under the direct mentorship of a faculty physician and research staff members, the research fellow will contribute to high-impact clinical and translational research, assisting in ...

University of Michigan

RESEARCH FELLOW

Ann Arbor, MI · On-site

Job Summary A Postdoctoral Research Fellow position is available in the Edwards Lab at the University of Michigan in the Department of Cell & Developmental Biology (CDB). We use a combination of ...

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$16.5K

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How much do research fellowship jobs pay per year?

As of Jul 17, 2026, the average yearly pay for research fellowship in the United States is $69,188.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $40,000.00 and $81,500.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What are some common challenges faced by research fellows during their projects, and how can they be addressed?

Research fellows often encounter challenges such as balancing multiple projects, securing funding, and coping with the pressure to publish results. Navigating these demands requires strong time management, open communication with supervisors, and proactive networking within the research community. Many fellows benefit from seeking mentorship and collaborating with team members to share expertise and resources, which helps in overcoming obstacles and achieving research goals.

What is the difference between Research Fellowship vs Research Assistant?

AspectResearch FellowshipResearch Assistant
CredentialsTypically requires a graduate degree (Master's or PhD)Usually requires a bachelor's or master's degree
Work EnvironmentIndependent research, often in academic or research institutionsSupporting research activities, assisting senior researchers
Employer & IndustryUniversities, research institutes, government agenciesUniversities, labs, research organizations

Research Fellowships are generally more advanced roles involving independent research, often requiring a graduate degree, while Research Assistants support research projects under supervision, typically with a bachelor's or master's degree. Both roles are common in academic and research settings but differ in responsibilities and qualifications.

What is a research fellowship?

A research fellowship is a temporary academic or professional position that provides individuals, often recent graduates or early-career researchers, with the opportunity to conduct independent or collaborative research in their field of study. These fellowships are typically funded by universities, research institutes, or external organizations, and may last from several months to a few years. Research fellows work under the guidance of a senior researcher or faculty member and often contribute to scholarly publications, experiments, or projects. The goal of a research fellowship is to advance knowledge, gain specialized experience, and enhance one's academic or professional credentials.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a Research Fellow, and why are they important?

To thrive as a Research Fellow, you need advanced expertise in your academic field, strong analytical skills, and typically a relevant PhD or equivalent research experience. Proficiency with research methodologies, data analysis software (such as SPSS, R, or Python), and familiarity with academic publishing systems is often required. Exceptional written and verbal communication, critical thinking, and the ability to work independently or collaboratively set outstanding Research Fellows apart. These skills are essential for producing high-quality research, securing funding, and effectively disseminating findings within the academic community.
More about Research Fellowship jobs
What cities are hiring for Research Fellowship jobs? Cities with the most Research Fellowship job openings:
What are the most commonly searched types of Research Fellowship jobs? The most popular types of Research Fellowship jobs are:
What states have the most Research Fellowship jobs? States with the most job openings for Research Fellowship jobs include:
What job categories do people searching Research Fellowship jobs look for? The top searched job categories for Research Fellowship jobs are:
Research Fellowship jobs near you
Infographic showing various Research Fellowship job openings in the United States as of July 2026, with employment types broken down into 2% Locum Tenens, 1% Internship, 1% As Needed, 81% Full Time, 14% Part Time, and 1% Contract. Highlights an 96% Physical, 1% Hybrid, and 3% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $69,188 per year, or $33.3 per hour.

Research Fellowship - Mechanistic Interpretability

Vmax

San Francisco, CA • On-site

Full-time

Re-posted 28 days ago

Job description

About Vmax
Vmax is an applied research lab developing AI capable of open-ended learning. We are building systems to exceed humans in all capacities by optimizing beyond the local maxima of learning from human expertise.
About the role
LLMs are fantastically powerful and there is a rapidly growing corpus of work devoted to understanding their internal representations and computations. We use the tools of mechanistic interpretability to enhance reinforcement learning by generating intrinsic rewards as a supplement or alternative to downstream human-generated verifiers.
This 3 to 6 month fellowship is for PhD students or equivalent early-career researchers who want to work at the intersection of mechanistic interpretability and reinforcement learning. You will own a focused research project, work closely with Vmax technical staff, and contribute to research publications.
Responsibilities
  • Develop mechanistic interpretability methods for understanding internal representations, features, circuits, and computations in language models and agents.
  • Investigate how model internals can be used to generate intrinsic rewards, auxiliary objectives, diagnostics, or training signals for reinforcement learning.
  • Design and run experiments that test whether interpretability-derived signals improve learning, exploration, generalization, robustness, or sample efficiency.
  • Compare internally derived rewards against baselines such as human-generated verifiers, reward models, task-level outcome rewards, and standard intrinsic motivation methods.
  • Use techniques such as probing, activation analysis, sparse autoencoders, causal interventions, feature attribution, or representation analysis to study model behavior.
  • Analyze failure modes, including reward hacking, spurious features, non-causal correlations, objective misspecification, and overfitting to narrow evaluation distributions.
  • Build research code, evaluation harnesses, and experimental infrastructure that make results reproducible and useful to the broader team.
  • Communicate research progress clearly through written updates, internal presentations, and final project outputs.
Role Requirements
  • Currently enrolled in a PhD program in machine learning, computer science, artificial intelligence, computational neuroscience, mathematics, or a related technical field. Exceptional candidates with equivalent research experience may also be considered.
  • Track record of research excellence or strong research promise, demonstrated through publications, preprints, open-source work, technical projects, competitions, or publicly available artifacts.
  • Working understanding of reinforcement learning.
  • Familiarity with mechanistic interpretability, representation analysis, or empirical methods for understanding neural networks.
  • Strong programming ability in Python and experience with at least one major ML framework such as PyTorch or JAX.
  • Clear written and verbal communication of technical ideas.
Nice to have
  • Experience with LLM post-training methods
  • Familiarity with intrinsic motivation, unsupervised RL, auxiliary objectives, representation learning for RL, or curiosity-driven learning.
  • Experience with scalable ML experimentation, distributed training, experiment tracking, or reproducible research infrastructure.
  • Interest in turning mechanistic understanding into practical training methods, rather than only analyzing models after training.
Role specific location policy
  • This role is based in our San Francisco office; for exceptional candidates we are willing to consider a hybrid arrangement

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