Roles at frontier labs · Research specialties
Reinforcement Learning Researcher and Engineer
44 recorded postings · Partial update · October 8, 2026
Recorded postings, not a live vacancy count. Partial update: some sources retain earlier observations; each listing has its own check date.
Reinforcement learning teams train models against rewards: reasoning, coding and agent skills learned in environments with graders and verifiers, run at large scale.
- Reinforcement learning 93%
- How language models work 70%
- Agents and tool use 55%
- Post-training and fine-tuning 52%
- Inference and serving 52%
- Evals and benchmarks 50%
taught here course coming not taught
The numbers
- Recorded postings at 13 labs
- 44
- Median base pay middle half $363k to $675k, 26 U.S. bands
- $413k
- No degree requirement stated 2% require a PhD outright
- 82%
- Years asked, median of the 4 that state a minimum
- 3
The recorded snapshot
Postings from 13 labs
In the labs' own words
In the labs' own words
“Familiarity with LLM training, fine-tuning, or evaluation workflows”
“Have hands-on experience with LLMs, RL, RLHF/RLAIF, post-training, evals, graders, synthetic data, model training, coding agents, tool-using agents, or production ML systems.”
“[Bonus] Experience in ML, LLM and RL academic research.”
Your way in
Three doors to this role
- Door 1
Finishing a degree
9% mention publications
The way in is a program: 32 recorded in the snapshot
- Door 2
A software engineer
82% have no degree requirement stated
What to add
- Door 3
A PhD
30% ask for distributed training
Engineering at scale
Asked often
The short answers
How much does a reinforcement learning researcher and engineer at a frontier lab make?
The median U.S. base salary across 26 recorded reinforcement learning researcher and engineer postings that publish a band is $413k; the middle half runs from $363k to $675k. Equity and bonus are not included.
Do you need a PhD to be a reinforcement learning researcher and engineer?
82% of the 44 recorded postings do not state a degree requirement, 18% mention a PhD or master's, and 2% require a PhD outright.
What skills do reinforcement learning researcher and engineer postings ask for?
Most often: reinforcement learning (93%), how language models work (70%), agents and tool use (55%), post-training and fine-tuning (52%), inference and serving (52%).
Which labs posted reinforcement learning researcher and engineer roles in this recorded board?
Recorded board: Anthropic (18), OpenAI (4), Cohere (3), Google DeepMind (3), Meta (Superintelligence Labs and FAIR) (3), xAI (3), and 7 more.
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The board
Recorded postings, newest first
The newest 40 of 44. Each title opens the lab's own posting. By family: fellowships, residencies and internships · software engineering at labs · research scientists and engineers
- Software Engineer, RL Data ↗
Cursor (Anysphere) · Software engineering at labs · No degree stated
- Software Engineer, RL Environments ↗
Cursor (Anysphere) · Software engineering at labs · No degree stated
- Anthropic Fellows Program, ML Systems & Reinforcement Learning ↗
Anthropic · Fellowships, residencies and internships · No degree stated
- Full-Stack Software Engineer, Reinforcement Learning ↗
Anthropic · Software engineering at labs · No degree stated · $300k to $405k base
- Research Engineer / Performance Engineer, RL Distributed Systems ↗
Anthropic · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated · $500k to $850k base
- Research Engineer / Research Scientist, RL Frontiers ↗
Anthropic · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated · $500k to $850k base
- Research Engineer, Chip Design RL (Reinforcement Learning) ↗
Anthropic · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated · $500k to $850k base
- Research Engineer, Code RL (Reinforcement Learning) ↗
Anthropic · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated · $500k to $850k base
- Research Engineer, Cybersecurity RL (Reinforcement Learning) ↗
Anthropic · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated · $500k to $850k base
- Research Engineer, Cybersecurity RL (Reinforcement Learning) ↗
Anthropic · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated
- Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning) ↗
Anthropic · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated · $500k to $850k base
- Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning) ↗
Anthropic · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated
- Research Engineer, Machine Learning (RL Velocity) ↗
Anthropic · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated
- Research Engineer, Machine Learning (RL Velocity) ↗
Anthropic · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated · $500k to $850k base
- Research Engineer, RL Engineering ↗
Anthropic · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated · $500k to $850k base
- Research Engineer, RL Scaling Science ↗
Anthropic · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated
- Staff Software Engineer, Code RL ↗
Anthropic · Software engineering at labs · No degree stated · $405k to $625k base
- Staff Software Engineer, Environments Infrastructure ↗
Anthropic · Software engineering at labs · No degree stated · $405k to $605k base
- Staff+ Research Engineer, RL Data Platform ↗
Anthropic · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated · $500k to $850k base
- Staff+ Software Engineer, RL Data Platform ↗
Anthropic · Software engineering at labs · No degree stated · $320k to $405k base
- Member of Technical Staff - RL Environments ↗
Cohere · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated
- Member of Technical Staff, Agentic Environments ↗
Cohere · Software engineering at labs · No degree stated
- Member of Technical Staff, Integration/RL Team (Research Engineer) ↗
Cohere · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated
- Research Scientist, Reasoning and Artificial General Intelligence, DeepMind ↗
Google DeepMind · Research scientists and engineers · PhD or equivalent experience
- Research Scientist, Robotics RL, DeepMind ↗
Google DeepMind · Research scientists and engineers · PhD or equivalent experience
- Research Scientist/Engineer, Frontier Reasoning, DeepMind ↗
Google DeepMind · Research scientists and engineers · PhD preferred
- Research Engineer / Scientist, Post-training & Reinforcement Learning - London ↗
H Company · Research scientists and engineers · PhD preferred
- Research Scientist / Engineer – Reinforcement Learning Infrastructure ↗
Luma AI · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated · $195k to $395k base
- Member of Technical Staff, Inference & RL Systems ↗
Magic · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated · $275k to $550k base
- Member of Technical Staff, RL Research & Environments ↗
Magic · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated · $275k to $550k base
- Research Scientist, FAIR Core Learning and Reasoning ↗
Meta (Superintelligence Labs and FAIR) · Research scientists and engineers · PhD required
- Staff Research Scientist, FAIR (RL / LLM's) ↗
Meta (Superintelligence Labs and FAIR) · Research scientists and engineers · PhD or equivalent experience
- Vision Architect, RL Silicon ↗
Meta (Superintelligence Labs and FAIR) · Software engineering at labs · No degree stated
- Research Engineer - Cybersecurity (RL Environments) ↗
Mistral AI · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated
- Agent Post-Training, Frontier Evals and Environments Research ↗
OpenAI · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated · $380k to $500k base
- Research Engineer, Frontier Evals & Environments ↗
OpenAI · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated · $295k to $380k base
- Research Engineer/Research Scientist, RL/Reasoning ↗
OpenAI · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated · $295k to $445k base
- Researcher, Synthetic RL ↗
OpenAI · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated · $295k to $445k base
- Research Scientist, Scaling RL ↗
Periodic Labs · Research scientists and engineers · No degree stated · $225k to $350k base
- Research, RL Scaling ↗
Thinking Machines Lab · Research scientists and engineers · PhD or equivalent experience · $350k to $475k base
