Demo

Research Engineer

Magic
San Francisco, CA Full Time
POSTED ON 8/24/2026
AVAILABLE BEFORE 10/24/2026

Magic’s mission is to build safe AGI that accelerates humanity’s progress on the world’s most important problems. We believe the most promising path to safe AGI lies in automating research and code generation to improve models and solve alignment more reliably than humans can alone. Our approach combines frontier-scale pre-training, domain-specific RL, ultra-long context, and inference-time compute to achieve this goal.

About the role

As a Research Engineer, you’ll work on training, evaluating, and serving large AI models and new inference-time compute techniques, build internet-scale datasets, and help prototype new research and product ideas.

What you'll work on

  • Optimize inference throughput for novel model architectures

  • Contribute to frameworks used for our research and production workloads

  • Train trillion-parameter models on large GPU clusters

  • Curate post-training datasets to improve targeted capabilities

  • Build out internet-scale data pipelines and crawlers

  • Design, prototype, and optimize new model architectures

  • Contribute to research across long-context, inference-time compute, RL, and more

What we’re looking for

  • Strong general software engineering skills

  • Thorough knowledge of the deep learning literature

  • Experience with pre- and post-training of LLMs

  • Ability to come up with and evaluate research ideas

  • Experience working with large distributed systems

  • Ability to handle large ETL workloads

Our culture

  • Integrity. Words and actions should be aligned

  • Hands-on. At Magic, everyone is building

  • Teamwork. We move as one team, not N individuals

  • Focus. Safely deploy AGI. Everything else is noise

  • Quality. Magic should feel like magic

Magic strives to be the place where high-potential individuals can do their best work. We value quick learning and grit just as much as skill and experience.

Compensation, benefits, and perks (US)

  • Annual salary ranges between $225K - $550K based on experience

  • Equity is a significant part of total compensation, in addition to salary

  • 401(k) plan with 6% salary matching

  • Generous health, dental and vision insurance for you and your dependents

  • Unlimited paid time off

  • Visa sponsorship and relocation stipend to bring you to SF, if possible

  • A small, fast-paced, highly focused team

Salary : $225,000 - $550,000

If your compensation planning software is too rigid to deploy winning incentive strategies, it’s time to find an adaptable solution. Compensation Planning
Enhance your organization's compensation strategy with salary data sets that HR and team managers can use to pay your staff right. Surveys & Data Sets

What is the career path for a Research Engineer?

Sign up to receive alerts about other jobs on the Research Engineer career path by checking the boxes next to the positions that interest you.
Income Estimation: 
$113,077 - $147,784
Income Estimation: 
$135,356 - $164,911
Income Estimation: 
$153,902 - $198,246
Income Estimation: 
$108,245 - $136,486
Income Estimation: 
$136,683 - $171,343
Income Estimation: 
$70,609 - $91,165
Income Estimation: 
$86,680 - $110,316
Income Estimation: 
$117,033 - $148,289

Sign up to receive alerts about other jobs with skills like those required for the Research Engineer.

Click the checkbox next to the jobs that you are interested in.

  • Architecture Skill

    • Income Estimation: $80,267 - $99,326
    • Income Estimation: $92,357 - $117,598
  • Building Codes and Regulations Skill

    • Income Estimation: $47,769 - $77,698
    • Income Estimation: $58,049 - $80,226
Employees: Get a Salary Increase
View Core, Job Family, and Industry Job Skills and Competency Data for more than 15,000 Job Titles Skills Library

Job openings at Magic

  • Magic San Francisco, CA
  • Magic’s mission is to build safe AGI that accelerates humanity’s progress on the world’s most important problems. We believe the most promising path to saf... more
  • 10 Days Ago

  • Magic San Francisco, CA
  • Magic’s mission is to build safe AGI that accelerates humanity’s progress on the world’s most important problems. We believe the most promising path to saf... more
  • 12 Days Ago

  • Magic San Francisco, CA
  • Magic’s mission is to build safe AGI that accelerates humanity’s progress on the world’s most important problems. We believe the most promising path to saf... more
  • 13 Days Ago

  • Magic York, NY
  • Loyalist is building an AI-powered revenue engine for restaurants and hospitality operators. We partner with ~1,000 restaurants ranging from groups like Ma... more
  • 14 Days Ago


Not the job you're looking for? Here are some other Research Engineer jobs in the San Francisco, CA area that may be a better fit.

  • Preference Model San Francisco, CA
  • About Us Preference Model is building automated ML research engineering. Existing frontier models are brittle when applied to real-world ML tasks. The pres... more
  • 29 Days Ago

  • OpenAI San Francisco, CA
  • By applying to this role, you will be considered for Research Engineer roles across all teams at OpenAI. About The Role As a Research Engineer here, you wi... more
  • 14 Days Ago

AI Assistant is available now!

Feel free to start your new journey!