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Research Software Engineer Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

Software Engineer, ML Research

San Francisco, CA ยท On-site

$241K/yr

Research Engineer Cursor is building the future of coding. We train frontier coding agents and scale RL on real user data to make them increasingly effective. About the role We're looking for ...

Software Engineer

Menlo Park, CA ยท On-site

$250K - $350K/yr

Turn promising research prototypes and scientific workflows into maintainable production systems. * Diagnose bottlenecks and failures across application code, infrastructure, data, and hardware ...

Quantum Software Manager

Berkeley, CA ยท On-site

$200K - $250K/yr

You'll work across the full stack--empowering engineers and physicists to deploy software to support ongoing research and development efforts as well as helping to transform prototype software into ...

Machine Learning Research Engineer

Cupertino, CA ยท On-site

$252K/yr

The Machine Learning Research Engineer will propose and conduct research to optimize performance on Sohu, collaborating with hardware architects to develop software solutions that leverage the unique ...

Quantum Software Manager

Berkeley, CA ยท On-site

$200K - $250K/yr

You'll work across the full stack--empowering engineers and physicists to deploy software to support ongoing research and development efforts as well as helping to transform prototype software into ...

Quantum Software Manager

Berkeley, CA ยท On-site

$200K - $250K/yr

You'll work across the full stack-empowering engineers and physicists to deploy software to support ongoing research and development efforts as well as helping to transform prototype software into ...

Quantum Software Manager

Berkeley, CA ยท On-site

$200K - $250K/yr

You'll work across the full stack-empowering engineers and physicists to deploy software to support ongoing research and development efforts as well as helping to transform prototype software into ...

Machine Learning Research Engineer

Cupertino, CA ยท On-site

$252K/yr

... software performance. Responsibilities : โ€ข Propose and conduct novel research to achieve results on Sohu that are unviable on GPUs โ€ข Translate core mathematical operations from the most popular ...

Guide and contribute to the Sohu software stack, performance characterization tools, and runtime ... We do not have boundaries between engineering and research, and we expect all of our technical ...

Guide and contribute to the Sohu software stack, performance characterization tools, and runtime ... We do not have boundaries between engineering and research, and we expect all of our technical ...

Showing results 41-60

Research Software Engineer information

See California salary details

$110K

$203.3K

How much do research software engineer jobs pay per year?

As of Sep 12, 2026, the average yearly pay for research software engineer in California is $197,884.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $202,300.00 and $202,300.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What does a research software engineer do?

As a Research Software Engineer, your daily work often involves designing and implementing software to support cutting-edge research projects, collaborating with scientists to understand their computational needs, and ensuring code reliability and reproducibility. You may spend time optimizing algorithms, writing unit tests, documenting software, and participating in code reviews within a collaborative team environment. Additionally, you might help deploy research applications on high-performance or cloud computing platforms and contribute to research publications. Balancing independent programming tasks with ongoing communication is key to making meaningful contributions to both the research and software development processes.

What skills and qualifications are needed to be a research software engineer?

To thrive as a Research Software Engineer, you need strong programming skills (often in Python, C++, or Java), a solid understanding of algorithms, and an academic or industry background in computer science or a related field. Familiarity with version control systems like Git, cloud platforms, and experience using scientific computing libraries and frameworks are valuable, while a master's or Ph.D. can be advantageous for specialized roles. Excellent problem-solving, communication, and collaborative skills help in working closely with researchers and multidisciplinary teams. These capabilities are crucial for successfully translating complex research problems into robust, reproducible software solutions that advance scientific inquiry.

What are the most commonly searched types of Research Software Engineer jobs in California?

The most popular types of Research Software Engineer jobs in California are:

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

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

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

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

What cities in California are hiring for Research Software Engineer jobs?

Cities in California with the most Research Software Engineer job openings:

What are popular job titles related to Research Software Engineer jobs in CA?

For Research Software Engineer jobs in CA, the most frequently searched job titles are:

Infographic showing various Research Software Engineer job openings in California as of September 2026, with employment types broken down into 1% Internship, 1% As Needed, 83% Full Time, 12% Part Time, and 3% Contract. Highlights an 86% Physical, 3% Hybrid, and 11% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $197,884 per year, or $95.1 per hour.

Software Engineer, ML Research

San Francisco, CA โ€ข On-site

$241K/yr

Other

Posted 25 days ago


Job description

Our mission is to automate coding. The first step in our journey is to build the best tool for professional programmers, using a combination of inventive research, design, and engineering. Our organization is very flat, and our team is small and talent dense. We particularly like people who are truthโ€‘seeking, passionate, and creative. We enjoy spirited debate, crazy ideas, and shipping code.

Research Engineer

Cursor is building the future of coding. We train frontier coding agents and scale RL on real user data to make them increasingly effective.

About the role

Weโ€™re looking for Research Engineers to build the training, inference, and data systems behind our frontier coding models. Youโ€™ll work directly with researchers to make progress repeatable and iteration fast.

What youโ€™ll do
  • Build our distributed training, inference, and RL infrastructure
  • Write libraries to simplify how researchers do large-scale data jobs
  • Architect the systems that turn Cursor user data into effective training data
You may be a fit if
  • You have a strong infrastructure/distributed systems background
  • You are able to architect and ship end-to-end with high ownership
  • You have strong intuitions about how language models work
  • Youโ€™re excited to learn more about ML
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