(Senior) Researcher

Epoch AI is looking for experienced researchers to lead new projects on one of multiple expanding teams.

About the role

We’re seeking a Researcher or Senior Researcher to help us improve society’s understanding of AI capabilities and their trajectories. Key activities will include helping define our future research directions and kick off new investigations into the most important trends in AI.

We are a fully remote organization, and we’re able to hire in many countries across Pacific Time to Central European Time. We invite anyone who is interested to apply, regardless of background, experience, or credentials. Please do not include a cover letter, photograph, or headshot of yourself, or any personal information that is not relevant to the role for which you're applying (including marital status, age, identity traits, etc.). This role will remain open, as we’re always looking for exceptional people to join our team.

Key responsibilities per role are broken down by team:

Data and Trends Researchers:
• Conduct research on frontier AI datacenters, AI supply chains, polling, benchmark analysis, earnings growth of AI companies, and AI models.

• Write data insights, reports, and articles to communicate your research.

• Help create and maintain data sets related to AI.

• Team-specific requirements: Experience with data analysis techniques like bootstrapping, handling uncertainty, regressions etc.

• Team-specific nice-to-haves: Prior research experience in one or more of GPU manufacturing and design, data centers, AI infrastructure, geospatial data analysis, AI governance, running surveys, forecasting, or sell-side analysis.

Insights Researchers:
• Pitching and developing new research projects; kick-off new investigations into the most important questions in AI.

• Making estimates and forecasts based on limited information for quantities like compute resources, power supply curves, or future capabilities.

• Evaluating technical claims to assess whether reported benchmark scores, training costs, or algorithmic improvements are credible. For example, what should we think of a lab’s reports of achieving IMO gold, or claims about DeepSeek-R1’s training costs?

• Experience with basic data analysis techniques like bootstrapping, handling uncertainty, regressions etc.

• Team-specific requirements: Prior research experience in at least one part of the AI development pipeline (hardware, datacenters, benchmarks, AI research, etc.).

Benchmarking and Evaluations Researchers:
• Create new benchmarks: Contribute to the development of brand new benchmarks. You will have the opportunity to pitch and prototype your own ideas in addition to helping out with existing projects.

• Analyze benchmark results: Run benchmarks on frontier models and analyze the results, both quantitatively and qualitatively.

• Collaborate across teams: Work closely with researchers, analysts, and other engineers at Epoch AI to ensure evaluation data and outputs are accurate, insightful, and effectively integrated into our research products and publications.

• Team-specific requirements: Prior research experience in quantitative or technical topics. Familiarity with AI benchmarking and some coding experience is a plus but not required.

What we're looking for:
• Curiosity and learning speed: You can rapidly absorb new information across diverse domains and stay at the forefront of a fast-moving field. You seek out new research and enjoy diving into unfamiliar topics.

• Estimation and forecasting skills: You’re comfortable making quantitative estimates with limited information and reason clearly about uncertainty.

• Familiarity with AI trends, including Epoch’s existing research.

• Strong coding skills and excellent written and verbal communication skills.

• Outstanding candidates might have prior experience in research similar to Epoch’s field, experience in at least one part of the AI development pipeline (hardware, datacenters, benchmarks) or relevant experience in related organizations.

If you don’t tick all these boxes but think you would be a great fit, please consider applying anyway!

Compensation & Benefits:
• Annual salary between $100,000 and $160,000 USD for Researchers; between $150,000 and $250,000 USD for Senior Researchers.

• Salaries are not restricted to USD, and contracts and payments are usually in local currencies. Conversions are based on one-year average exchange rates.

• Fully remote environment, including flexible work hours and schedules for most roles; paid access to local coworking space as desired.

• Competitive global benefits program, including a comprehensive health insurance program—including supplemental benefits specific to a local country, as available and mandated by local law—and life insurance and a pension plan, if applicable in your country.

• Generous paid time off (PTO), including no specific annual limit, with 30 days PTO per year protected, unlimited personal and sick leave, and 4 months paid parental leave for permanent staff with at least 12 months of tenure (prorated parental leave if less than 12 months).

• A flexible and generous expense policy for you to spend on equipment and a large range of productivity tools or learning/development opportunities you might find valuable, subject to regulations and manager approval.

• Paid work trips, including 3 staff retreats per year and relevant conferences.

• Access to our very well-equipped offices in Berkeley, California, including paid meals, snacks, gym, and more.

Additional Information

While we welcome applicants from all time zones, we prefer candidates who can overlap with UTC–8 (Pacific Time) and UTC (Greenwich Mean Time), as most of our staff work in this range of time zones. We also prefer candidates who can travel: we hold three retreats per year, during which we record podcast episodes and other communication efforts.

Please submit all of your application materials in English and note that we require professional level English proficiency.
Epoch is committed to building an inclusive, equitable, and supportive community for you to thrive and do your best work. We’re committed to finding the best people for our team, so please don’t hesitate to apply for a role regardless of your age, gender identity/expression, political identity, personal preferences, physical abilities, veteran status, neurodiversity or any other background. Please email [email protected] if you have any questions about this role, accessibility requests, or if you want to request an extension to the application deadline. However, we will not review applications submitted to this email address; please submit your application through the link on this page.

About Epoch AI

Epoch AI is a research institute that investigates trends in machine learning and the economic consequences of AI. Our mission is to develop a comprehensive, publicly accessible knowledge base on AI that informs policymakers, industry leaders, and society at large.

We strive to achieve both rigor and accessibility to our work, as exemplified by some of our most successful projects, including our database of AI models and our AI trends dashboard. Our body of research includes our work on compute trends (IJCN 2022), data scarcity (ICML 2024), and algorithmic progress (NeurIPS 2024). You can read more about our work and mission on our website and in this Time profile.