Alignment Research Manager

AE Studio is a 160-person ML consultancy dedicated to solving the hardest problems in AI. We use our profits to fund research on the most important problems in AI Safety and Alignment. We partner with top researchers from both academia and industry, including Anthropic, Goodfire AI, Redwood, Princeton, MATS, RAND Corporation, and others. Our research is published in top ML conferences and currently deployed in safety-critical systems.

AE Studio was founded 10 years ago with the goal of helping corporate clients develop humanity-affirming, agency-promoting technology. Since then we’ve developed a reputation for rapidly delivering world-class solutions to their hardest problems. We take the same client-centric approach to research, partnering with the world’s best external researchers to develop world-class results. They provide the vision and our researchers make their ideas a reality.

Our core alignment team is 25 researchers and growing. We hire from all backgrounds. Whether you’re an independent researcher, an engineer, or an academic, AE is a place to make real impact on the single most important problem of our time. We research a diverse set of ambitious alignment directions that others neglect, including pretraining interventions for model safety, novel interpretability techniques, neuroscience-inspired approaches to alignment, and many others.

You can learn more about our team and work from our Alignment Podcast as well as our research page.

About the role

You will be the person who makes the research acceleration model actually run. You own projects end to end: turning abstract research ideas into clear roadmaps, keeping technical teams unblocked and moving fast, and making sure progress is visible to leadership, collaborators, and funders. Projects usually involve several stakeholders, grants, or research partners, and some are internal research. You break down ambiguity, define milestones, and focus the team on what matters.

You also dive in when something needs to be tested, validated, or unblocked. You identify dead ends early and keep work pointed at the highest-upside directions. And you're someone who could eventually lead a Skunkworks spinout, a new research track, or an internal product.

About you

• Working knowledge of AI and ML systems, enough to track technical complexity and ask the right questions

• Experience managing complex technical projects, including research

• You can structure execution across ambiguous, high-stakes efforts

• You translate fluently between engineers, researchers, clients, and funders

• You take initiative without waiting for permission and own results end to end

• You care about AI alignment and believe meaningful progress on the problem is possible

• Eager to use AI tools and automate everything you can

• Comfortable in a fast-paced, startup-like environment

Bonus

• Experience in AI research, technical product leadership, or startup founding

• Prior work with generative AI, large language models, or experimental architectures

• Background in DARPA-style research, grant-based work, or scientific pipelines

• Being in LA to work from our office

Benefits

Remote-first with flexible schedules. Coworking spaces available in the Bay Area and NYC. Platinum health insurance, free lunches at the office, weekly knowledge-sharing talks, and an annual team retreat. Regular performance-based raises and a diversified employee equity program.

Compensation

Salary range is $180K to $240K per year for US-based candidates. Not in the range? Apply anyway and may have other roles opening soon