Six Figure Work

Research Engineer

Idler

Company websiteidler.ai (Idler, opens in new tab)

Base salary $125K  to $400K

Employer-published annual base salary, USD. Advertised base range in San Francisco, CA

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  • LocationSan Francisco, CA
  • WorkplaceOn-site
  • Status at last checkSource accepting applications when checked
  • Last checked (2 min ago) · observed since

About this job

About idler

idler is a frontier data research lab. We build the evals and environments that the world's leading frontier labs use to measure and train their models.

After raising a $9m seed round led by Paradigm, we spent the last year developing coding evals for top coding models you know and love. At the same time, we've expanded into other domains besides coding: RSI & Auto-Research, Law, Enterprise Business, Cybersecurity, and others. Now, we are facing more lab demand for our data than we can serve, and are rapidly scaling the team to grow the business.

Our approach to creating training data scales using technology, and all of our data products are built on a unified self-reinforcing platform that learns through experience.

You would be joining a close-knit team that has reached product market fit, and your work would directly help to multiply our revenue.

You can see some of our work here: https://idler.ai/collections

About the role

As a Research Engineer at idler, you’ll build the systems and infrastructure that our entire company relies on. You will solve open-ended, technical challenges with focus on performance, scale, and simplicity. In the era of AI-coding, systems-level thinking and attention to detail is more important than experience with a particular framework or language.

Examples of what you'll do

  • Design and build scaleable systems that generate RL environments

  • Create agentic QA systems to validate environment quality and fairness

  • Work directly with AI researchers at leading labs to understand what makes training data effective

  • Handle petabyte scale ETL and orchestrate millions of concurrent jobs

  • Support new product lines as we expand beyond coding environments

  • Manage our security posture and compliance requirements

What we’re looking for

  • 1-10 years of experience writing excellent production software (new grads OK)

  • Experience with full-stack applications in a popular programming language

  • A meticulous problem solver who creates robust systems under time pressure

Tech stack

Typescript, React, NodeJS, Postgres, Redis, Vercel, Cursor/Claude Code/Codex, Tinker, Modal, AWS, Daytona, GRPO

Details

  • In-person in San Francisco

  • Competitive salary + meaningful equity

  • Free meals in office

  • Healthcare, 401(k), 15 days of PTO per year

  • Relocation assistance

  • Small, ambitious team

This is an in-person role in San Francisco. We're a tight-knit founding team and we play to win. Join us if you like to win too.

Source: Idler on Ashby · View original posting (opens in new tab)

Pay in context

This role's base floor ($125,000) is above 7% of the 1,731 Data & ML roles in California listed on this site; 7 others list the same floor. Their median floor is $184,000; the middle half runs from $154,300 to $224,000.

Only jobs on this site count, and each one publishes a base salary of $100,000 or more, so this compares six-figure jobs with each other, not with the whole market. Computed Nov 8, 2026.

This range next to 1 other live Idler role with the nearest advertised base floor
Chart as a table
This range next to 1 other live Idler role with the nearest advertised base floor
RolePublished base
Research Engineer (this listing)$125K - $400K
Special Projects Operator$125K - $400K

Same $100K to $400K scale as every card. All Idler roles · How to read the bar

Observed changes

  1. First observed on the employer's board
  2. Began meeting the published-salary criteria
  3. fields changed
Observed since
Employer-stated posting date
2025-10-14
Where this pay comes from

Location as the employer wrote it: San Francisco

USD 125,000 – 400,000 · 1 YEAR · Salary

Method
Structured pay field published by the employer
Checked
Rule set
us-base-v2

The employer's job board publishes this pay as a dedicated data field. We read the field directly; no interpretation was needed.

What we verified

  • The pay figures come from the employer's own listing, quoted exactly above.
  • The pay is an annual base salary in US dollars with a minimum of at least $100,000.
  • The role was publicly listed on the employer's job board when last checked.

We do not verify what the employer will actually offer, whether the employer is still recruiting for the role, or anything beyond what the employer published. Full methodology.

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