Sounding II

The following open AI-related roles are ordered from foundational model development to real-world physical deployment:

1. Research Engineer, Pretraining — Anthropic — $350K+ — San Francisco
   Works on the core training processes that produce frontier-scale foundation models.
2. Researcher, Synthetic Reinforcement Learning — OpenAI — $295K+ — San Francisco
   Develops training systems based on simulated environments rather than human-generated data.
3. Research Engineer, Universes — Anthropic — $500K+ — San Francisco
   Constructs synthetic environments in which advanced AI systems are trained and evaluated.
4. Simulation Environments Engineer — OpenAI (Robotics) — $230K+ — San Francisco
   Builds virtual worlds used to train robotic systems prior to real-world deployment.
5. Research Engineer / Scientist, Post-Training — OpenAI — $295K+ — San Francisco
   Transforms raw models into usable systems through fine-tuning and behavioral shaping.
6. Applied Safety Research Engineer — Anthropic — $320K+ — San Francisco
   Designs technical safeguards to constrain and guide the behavior of advanced AI systems.
7. ML Infrastructure Engineer, Safeguards — Anthropic — $320K+ — San Francisco
   Builds systems required to implement safety constraints across deployed models.
8. Researcher, Automated Red Teaming — OpenAI — $230K–$385K — San Francisco
   Continuously probes models for failure modes and develops mitigations for high-risk behavior.
9. AI/ML Security Engineer (Senior Staff) — Google Cloud — $262K+ — Bay Area
   Designs defenses against prompt injection, jailbreaking, and data exfiltration in AI systems.
10. Research Engineer, Cybersecurity Reinforcement Learning — Anthropic — $300K+ — San Francisco
    Applies reinforcement learning to simulate and defend against advanced cyber threats.
11. AI Deployment Engineer, Startups — OpenAI — $198K–$280K — San Francisco
    Pushes frontier models into production environments across startup ecosystems.
12. Forward Deployed Engineer — OpenAI — $185K+ — San Francisco
    Embeds with organizations to convert model capability into operational systems.
13. Research Engineer, AI for Science — OpenAI — $295K+ — San Francisco
    Applies frontier models directly to scientific research and discovery.
14. AI Research Scientist, Foundational AI Research (FAIR) — Meta — $350K–$500K+ — Bay Area
    Advances core foundation model capabilities within Meta’s central research organization.
15. AI Research Scientist, FAIR Chemistry — Meta — $368K–$513K — San Francisco
    Applies AI to simulate chemical and material systems at a fundamental level.
16. AI Training Infrastructure Engineer, Figure AI — $240K–$380K — San Jose
    Scales compute and data systems required to train embodied AI systems.
17. AI Engineer, Vision & Foundation Models (Optimus) — Tesla — $280K–$450K — Palo Alto
    Builds multimodal perception systems enabling humanoid robots to interpret the physical world.
18. AI Engineer, Manipulation (Optimus) — Tesla — $270K–$420K — Palo Alto
    Develops learned control systems for dexterous robotic manipulation.
19. Helix AI Engineer, Agentic Systems — Figure AI — $260K–$410K — San Jose
    Builds autonomous multimodal agents capable of sustained real-world operation.
20. Helix AI Engineer, Robot Learning — Figure AI — $250K–$400K — San Jose
    Designs learning-based visuomotor policies for real-world robotic tasks.

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Sources: Public job postings from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, Tesla, and Figure AI career pages, accessed March 22, 2026.