Senior Research Engineer, LLM

Genies is an avatar technology company powering the next era of interactive digital identity through AI companions. With the Avatar Framework and intuitive creation tools, Genies enables developers, talent, and creators to generate and deploy game-ready AI companions. The company’s technology stack supports full customization, AI-generated fashion and props, and seamless integration of user-generated content (UGC). Backed by investors including Bob Iger, Silver Lake, BOND, and NEA, Genies’ mission is to become the visual and interactive layer for the LLM-powered internet.

Genies is looking for a passionate Senior Research Engineer to join our core AI team at our Bay Area office in San Francisco, CA. This is a critical role where you will take end-to-end ownership of the research and development of our core generative AI systems, driving the roadmap that will define the intelligence and interactivity of millions of AI avatars. You will solve fundamental technical challenges in creating socially-aware, autonomous, and creative AI characters and companions. Working closely with a dedicated team of engineers and researchers, you will bridge the gap between cutting-edge research and real-world product impact.

What You'll Be Doing:

• Architect and develop next-generation agentic reasoning frameworks, enabling avatars to formulate plans, utilize tools, and interact dynamically within Genies' social gaming ecosystems.
• Design and implement advanced LLM post-training and alignment algorithms (e.g., RLHF, DPO/GRPO) to fine-tune avatar personality, behavior, and conversational quality.
• Pioneer research into socially-grounded intelligence, empowering avatars with memory, context-awareness, and the ability to engage in complex, multi-turn interactions.
• Develop robust data pipelines to process diverse, multimodal user interaction data, identifying key signals for improving model performance and agent capabilities.
• Create novel evaluation methodologies and benchmarks to rigorously measure avatar quality across dimensions like role-playing consistency, safety, and task completion.
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams to translate research breakthroughs into scalable, production-ready systems that directly impact the user experience.
• Stay at the forefront of academic and industry research in LLMs and AI agents, identifying and prototyping new techniques to advance our technology.

What You Should Have:

• PhD or Master in Computer Science, AI, Machine Learning, or a related field, or equivalent industry experience with a strong track record of research and engineering innovation.
• 3+ years of hands-on experience in machine learning, with proven expertise in LLM post-training techniques (e.g., RLHF, SFT, RLVR), and significant contributions to real-world AI products.
• Demonstrated experience in developing LLM-based agentic systems, including planning, tool use, and/or reasoning frameworks.
• Exceptional software engineering skills in Python and deep experience with ML frameworks like PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to own and pursue an ambitious research agenda autonomously.

What We Prefer 

• A track record of impactful work, demonstrated through publications in top-tier conferences (e.g., ACL, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, AAAI, EMNLP, NAACL).
• Familiarity with multimodal models, particularly those integrating language with vision, 3D, or speech.
• Experience training large models in a distributed setting (e.g., using PyTorch Distributed, DeepSpeed).
• A passion for or prior experience in gaming, social simulation, or interactive entertainment.
• Self-starter, analytical, creative, highly motivated with an innovative spirit
• Excellent communication skills

How Genies will support you

Genies is a well-funded, growing start-up that cares deeply about each of our employees' growth and success. Our roles and their responsibilities are created with a breadth of scope that introduces each employee to exciting new challenges and opportunities that a growing start-up encounters. The actual base pay is dependent upon a number of factors, including: professional background, training, transferable skills, work experience, education, location, business and product needs, and market demand. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. Full-time employees may also be eligible for equity compensation, in addition to a robust health, wellness, and benefits package. 

Starting Salary Range: $180,000 - $230,000

Here's why you'll love working at Genies:

• You'll work with a team that you’ll be able to learn from and grow with, including support for your own professional development
• You'll be at the helm of your own career, shaping it with your own innovative contributions to a nascent team and product with flexible hours and a work from home policy
• You'll enjoy the culture and perks of a startup, with the stability of being well funded 
• Comprehensive health insurance for you and your family (Anthem + Kaiser Options Available), Dental and Vision Insurance
• Competitive salaries and 401K program for all full time employees 
• Flexible paid time off, sick time, and paid company holidays, in addition to paid parental leave, bereavement leave, and jury duty leave for full-time employees
• Health & wellness support through programs such as monthly wellness reimbursement 
• Working in a brand new, bright, open-environment and fun office space - there’s even a slide! 

Genies is an equal opportunity employer committed to promoting an inclusive work environment free of discrimination and harassment. We value diversity, inclusion, and aim to provide a sense of belonging for everyone.