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Research Programmer Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

Hudson River Trading

Research Engineer

London, CA

We are seeking highly motivated and skilled Research Engineers who will work very closely with our Algo Developer (Quant Research) trading teams. These roles require exceptional programming ...

Solcoa Industries

Research Engineer

Alameda, CA · On-site

$120K - $175K/yr

The Role - Research Engineer Own difficult, first-principles R&D that unlocks rare-earth metal production at scale. You will design and execute high-temperature experiments, build and operate custom ...

PROPRIUS

AI Research Engineer

San Francisco, CA

AI Research Engineer Location: San Francisco, CA Sponsorship: No Relocation: No Industry: Data Science Join a Fortune 500 at the top of its field and one that provides custom solutions to over 150,00 ...

Career Launch

Research Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

THE ROLE As a Research Engineer, you may work on projects that require strong execution, communication, analytical judgment, and the ability to move quickly in ambiguous environments. WHAT YOU MAY ...

FAR.AI

$100K - $190K/yr

... 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 ...

Factory

Research Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

About the Role Factory is seeking innovative Research Engineers to design and integrate advanced AI and ML capabilities that revolutionize productivity and accelerate innovation within software ...

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All JobsResearch Programmer JobsResearch Programmer Jobs in California

Research Programmer information

See California salary details

$10.9K

$111.3K

$127.3K

How much do research programmer jobs pay per year?

As of Aug 23, 2026, the average yearly pay for research programmer in California is $111,322.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $100,700.00 and $127,300.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What is a research programmer?

Research programmers are professionals who develop software, algorithms, and computational tools to support academic or scientific research projects. They work closely with researchers to design, implement, and optimize code for data analysis, simulations, and experiments. Their role often involves adapting existing software or creating new applications to solve specific research problems, ensuring that the software meets the requirements of the research team. Research programmers may also contribute to writing technical documentation and publishing results.

How do research programmers typically collaborate with researchers and other team members during a project?

Research Programmers often work closely with principal investigators, data scientists, and subject matter experts to develop, test, and optimize software solutions tailored to research needs. Collaboration is highly iterative and may involve regular meetings to align on project goals, troubleshoot technical challenges, and adapt code to evolving research requirements. Effective communication and a flexible approach are key, as programmers frequently translate complex research concepts into functional code and may also assist with data analysis or visualization tasks.

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

To thrive as a Research Programmer, you need a strong background in computer science, programming languages (such as Python, Java, or C++), and a relevant bachelor's or master's degree. Familiarity with scientific computing tools, version control systems (like Git), and data analysis platforms is typically required. Analytical thinking, problem-solving abilities, and effective communication skills help you collaborate with research teams and translate complex requirements into code. These skills enable you to develop robust software solutions that advance research goals and ensure project success.

What is the difference between Research Programmer vs Data Analyst?

AspectResearch ProgrammerData Analyst
Required CredentialsBachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Data Science, or related fields; programming skillsBachelor's or Master's in Statistics, Data Science, or related fields; analytical skills
Work EnvironmentResearch labs, academic institutions, tech companiesBusiness, healthcare, finance, or marketing sectors
Employer & Industry UsageResearch projects, academic research, R&D departmentsData interpretation, reporting, and decision support in organizations

Research Programmers focus on developing software and tools for research purposes, often working in academic or research settings. Data Analysts interpret data to provide insights for business decisions. While both roles require strong technical skills, Research Programmers emphasize programming and software development, whereas Data Analysts focus on data interpretation and visualization.

What are popular job titles related to Research Programmer jobs in California?

For Research Programmer jobs in California, the most frequently searched job titles are:

What job categories do people searching Research Programmer jobs in California look for?

The top searched job categories for Research Programmer jobs in California are:

What cities in California are hiring for Research Programmer jobs?

Cities in California with the most Research Programmer job openings:

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Research Programmer jobs near you
Infographic showing various Research Programmer job openings in California as of August 2026, with employment types broken down into 1% Internship, 1% As Needed, 87% Full Time, 9% Part Time, and 2% Contract. Highlights an 83% Physical, 4% Hybrid, and 13% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $111,322 per year, or $53.5 per hour.

Research Engineer

Lotus Health AI, Inc

San Francisco, CA • On-site

Full-time

Re-posted 11 days ago

Job description

Research Engineer
About Us
Lotus Health is a groundbreaking primary care app that integrates your medical records, AI, and real doctors to provide free, personalized healthcare and prescriptions.
Our team includes ex-founders and engineers who have built and scaled consumer apps to millions of users, generating over $100M in annual revenue. Lotus is backed by Kleiner Perkins, and clinicians at Harvard and Stanford.
Role Overview
We are hiring a Founding Research Engineer to design, prototype, and ship the core reasoning and agentic systems that power Lotus. You will turn messy health data into accurate, cited, and actionable guidance for patients and clinicians. The work blends applied research with product engineering: dataset curation, model training and evaluation, retrieval and tool use, safety and alignment, and putting breakthroughs into production. You will work side by side with clinicians and the founding team and your work will reach patients quickly.
Responsibilities
  • Research and Modeling
    • Build and iterate on agentic workflows that use retrieval, function calling, and planning to answer health questions with citations and uncertainty awareness
    • Fine tune and distill models for summarization, extraction, classification, and dialogue grounded in medical data
    • Develop abstention, routing, and fallback strategies that favor safety and correctness
  • Datasets and Labeling
    • Curate high quality datasets from EHR, claims, labs, devices, and chat logs with rigorous deidentification
    • Design synthetic data and clinician-in-the-loop labeling pipelines that reflect real clinical use
  • Evaluation and Safety
    • Own the eval stack for medical correctness, hallucination, bias, safety, latency, and cost
    • Build automated red teaming and regression suites tied to clinical guidelines and source citations
  • Systems and Production
    • Ship research to production with robust observability, feature flags, and rollback plans
    • Optimize inference with batching, quantization, LoRA or QLoRA, and vLLM or TensorRT where appropriate
    • Collaborate with data and product engineers on retrieval, storage schemas, and lineage so every claim is explainable

What You Bring:
  • Strong Python and deep experience with PyTorch or JAX
  • Track record shipping applied ML or LLM features to real users, not just prototypes
  • Hands-on experience with RAG, prompt and tool design, evaluation harnesses, and error analysis
  • Solid SQL plus comfort with vector stores and retrieval patterns
  • Product sense, pragmatism, and the ability to reduce complex systems into simple, reliable components
  • Willingness to work on-site in San Francisco

Bonus Points:
  • Experience with clinical ontologies and standards such as SNOMED CT, ICD, LOINC, RxNorm, FHIR, and NCPDP
  • Background in RLHF or RLAIF, distillation, program-of-thought, and structured tool use
  • Experience building speech or multimodal pipelines for medical settings
  • Contributions to open source, published work, or well known eval frameworks
  • Deep familiarity with observability stacks such as Sentry and Langfuse and containerized deployments such as Docker or ECS

Why Lotus:
Join a team redefining how healthcare information is understood and acted upon. As a founding member you will set research direction, shape the model and agent architecture, and see your work improve care for real people at scale. You will work with exceptional engineers, clinicians, and researchers to build accessible, free primary care for everyone.
If this sounds like you, we would love to meet.

Apply