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About the Role

As Research Lead for Post-Training & Alignment, you will own Autodesk's research strategy for transforming foundation models into reliable, aligned, and useful systems for complex, domain-specific workflows. This is a deeply technical leadership role shaping research direction, driving architectural decisions, and leading a growing team of AI scientists while contributing directly to research.

Responsibilities

• Own post-training strategy for model development, including RLHF, preference optimization, agentic systems, and long-horizon reasoning.
• Develop novel algorithms to enhance model reliability, controllability, and alignment.
• Make principled architectural decisions regarding pre-training, post-training, or system-level challenges.
• Design and execute experiments to shape model behavior, robustness, and reasoning quality.
• Partner with infrastructure teams to build scalable and reproducible post-training workflows.
• Contribute to publications, patents, and Autodesk's external research visibility.
• Design evaluation frameworks for long-horizon reasoning, tool use, agentic behavior, safety, and real-world workflow completion.
• Lead rigorous model analysis and interpretability efforts.
• Drive human-in-the-loop evaluation with high annotation quality and sound scientific methodology.
• Establish model readiness criteria and provide go/no-go recommendations for releases.
• Clearly communicate technical risks, limitations, and trade-offs to leadership.
• Manage, mentor, and grow a team of AI scientists.
• Set technical direction and research priorities for post-training and alignment initiatives.
• Foster a research culture of scientific rigor, reproducibility, and fast iteration.
• Help recruit world-class talent in ML, RL, alignment, and foundation models.
• Collaborate closely with pre-training teams, infrastructure, product organizations, and other stakeholders.
• Translate research trade-offs into clear guidance for leadership.

Requirements

• Deep hands-on expertise in reinforcement learning for foundation models.
• Fluency with post-training methods (RLHF, RLAIF, DPO, PPO, or adjacent approaches).
• Proven experience leading or mentoring technical research teams in an academic or industry setting.
• Strong intuition for model behavior, alignment challenges, and post-training trade-offs.
• Experience designing evaluation systems and rigorously assessing model readiness.
• Ability to communicate complex technical trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• A PhD or equivalent depth of industry research experience in ML, RL, AI, or a related field.
• Experience at a frontier model lab or advanced applied AI organization.
• A strong publication record at leading ML or AI venues.
• Background in alignment research, preference learning, or agentic AI.
• Experience deploying or supporting production AI systems.
• Familiarity with large-scale training infrastructure and compute trade-offs.

Skills

• Reinforcement Learning
• Foundation Models
• Post-Training Methods
• RLHF
• RLAIF
• DPO
• PPO
• Model Reliability
• Model Controllability
• Model Alignment
• Long-Horizon Reasoning
• Agentic Systems
• Evaluation Frameworks
• Model Analysis
• Interpretability
• Human-in-the-loop Evaluation
• Scientific Methodology
• Technical Leadership
• Mentoring
• Research Strategy
• Algorithm Development
• Architectural Decisions
• Experiment Design
• Scalable Workflows
• Reproducible Workflows
• Publication
• Patents
• External Research Visibility
• Risk Assessment
• Preference Learning
• AI Research

Location

• London
• San Francisco
• Toronto
• Remote (US/CA/EU)
• Remote: Germany
• Remote: France
• Remote: Italy

Work Type

• Remote
• Hybrid

Experience Level

• Principal Scientist
• Research Lead

Education Level

• PhD or equivalent depth of industry research experience in ML, RL, AI, or a related field

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits package
• Annual cash bonuses
• Stock grants

About the Company

• Autodesk AI Lab advances state-of-the-art research across generative AI, multimodal foundation models, reasoning systems, and human-AI collaboration.
• Our work has direct impact across the industries that shape the physical world.
• We are an active contributor to the global research community and collaborate closely with leading academic and industry labs.
• At Autodesk, we are building a diverse workplace and an inclusive culture to give more people the chance to imagine, design, and make a better world.
• Amazing things are created every day with our software – from the greenest buildings and cleanest cars to the smartest factories and biggest hit movies.
• We help innovators turn their ideas into reality, transforming not only how things are made, but what can be made.
• Our culture guides the way we work and treat each other, informs how we connect with customers and partners, and defines how we show up in the world.
• When you’re an Autodesker, you can do meaningful work that helps build a better world designed and made for all.

Equal Opportunity

• Autodesk is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and considers all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic.