Applied AI Research Engineer

We build the AI layer for Starburst's products, including AIDA. We design agents that let users ask questions in natural language and get accurate, grounded answers backed by their actual data. We operate with startup speed inside an enterprise company, shipping weekly and measuring results. This is the first dedicated research engineering hire on the team.

Role Summary

You will own the intelligence layer that makes AIDA's agents correct, trustworthy, and measurably better over time. The work spans information retrieval, knowledge representation, and evaluation science. You will turn ambiguous notions of "agent quality" into clear metrics, build the grounding systems that connect agent reasoning to verified data, and create the evaluation infrastructure that makes quality a first-class engineering discipline.

You will operate at the research/systems boundary: running experiments with academic rigor and shipping results with production engineering discipline. Research and engineering are not separate tracks here. You will own experiments end to end, from hypothesis through production deployment.