--- title: 'AI Research Resident at Maincode' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/ai-research-resident-maincode-australia-ketgdbs6fjy8' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-11' --- # AI Research Resident at Maincode - **Company:** Maincode - **Location:** Australia - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-06-11 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/maincode/f95bbc0e-fe76-4a88-a9c2-b396e936318b ## Job description Maincode is an Australian AI research company building Matilda, an assistant that understands complex work, reasons over context, and takes meaningful action safely. The AI Research Residency is a paid 3 to 6 month program for late-stage PhD students and exceptional early-career researchers who want to pursue high-impact AI research grounded in real systems. Residents work closely with Maincode's research and engineering teams, with dedicated access to large-scale GPU compute and our in-house research infrastructure. You will explore open problems, run experiments at scale, and produce work that can contribute to top-tier publications, open research, infrastructure, or the systems behind Matilda. This role is research-first, but applied. Strong projects may take the form of model research, evaluations, infrastructure, technical engineering work, or product-facing research that improves Matilda and future Maincode systems. Research areas We are interested in research that makes AI systems more capable, reliable, efficient, and useful in the real world. The residency program is primarily focused on the following areas: Agents - Tool use, planning, memory, computer control, multi-agent systems, and safe execution in real-world environments. - Long-context reasoning, workflow understanding, state tracking, memory systems, and methods for maintaining coherence across complex tasks. Safety and evaluation - Capability evaluations, alignment, oversight, interpretability, robustness, red-teaming, and benchmarks for real-world task completion. Training and algorithms - Language model training, reinforcement learning, reasoning methods, optimisation, architectures, and new approaches to improving model behaviour. Data - Data curation, filtering, synthetic data, mixture design, quality verification, pruning, and principled approaches to training signal. Multimodal systems - Vision-language models, grounding, perception, multimodal reasoning, and systems that combine language, visual context, and action. Efficiency and infrastructure - Training and inference efficiency, kernels, parallelism, sharding, decoding, quantisation, scheduling, and systems for running large models reliably. ## Responsibilities - Lead research that advances Maincode's work on capable, useful, and trustworthy AI systems. - Design and execute experiments, develop new research directions, and collaborate closely with our researchers and engineers. - Produce research outputs suitable for top-tier conferences, journals, technical reports, open-source releases, or deployment in Matilda and future Maincode systems. ## Qualifications - Late-stage PhD student, recent PhD graduate, or exceptional early-career researcher. - Strong research taste and the ability to identify important problems before they are obvious. - Experience publishing, preprinting, or producing high-quality research in AI, machine learning, or adjacent technical fields. - Ability to define and execute independent research under uncertainty. - Interest in building AI systems that can reason, act, and operate reliably in complex real-world environments. ## What you will have access to - Dedicated access to Maincode's GPU compute and research infrastructure. - Close collaboration with a small, high-calibre team across AI research, systems engineering, product engineering, and design. - Support for top-tier conference and journal submissions, with the opportunity for strong research to contribute to Matilda and future Maincode systems. - A research environment focused on deep work, technical seriousness, and real-world impact. ## About Maincode ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Maincode is an Australian AI research and product company building Matilda, an intelligent assistant that understands context, learns your workflow, and helps you move faster and more safely. - **Entity Type**: Private (Bootstrapped – no external funding rounds disclosed) - **Headquarters**: Melbourne, Australia - **Founded**: Not publicly disclosed (recent high-growth signals suggest founding around 2024–2025) - **Founders**: Not publicly disclosed (Dave L. is listed as Chief Coder; founder status unclear) ## Core Business - **Primary industries**: AI research, applied intelligence, product development for enterprise and knowledge workers. - **Target customers**: B2B (teams and individuals needing a nuanced, safe AI assistant), researchers, and developers. - **Mission**: “AI that earns trust in the real world, to move humans forward.” Focus on safe, transparent, and helpful AI systems. ## Products & Services - **Matilda** (flagship product, private beta 2026): AI assistant with deep contextual understanding across long conversations, multi-step reasoning (inspectable steps), proactive but permission-asking behavior, learning of user workflows over time. Built and hosted in Australia, aligned with Australian privacy standards. - **Maincoder** (open-source 1B parameter model, released Dec 2025): Code generation and transformation model optimized for low latency and cost. - **AI Research Residency** (3–6 month paid program): For late-stage PhD students and early-career researchers. Provides access to Maincode’s GPU cluster, infrastructure, and direct collaboration with the core team; aims to publish at top-tier venues. - **Inference infrastructure (MC-2 cluster)**: High‑availability, sub-200ms global latency inference using custom batching, model sharding, dynamic routing (CUDA, Kubernetes, Terraform, GCP, vLLM, AMD Instinct GPUs). - **Context Engine & Action Layer**: Proprietary frameworks for long-context reasoning and agentic tool-use/sandboxed execution (turning Matilda from chatbot to agent). - **Eval Suite**: Internal evaluation framework for model capability, safety alignment, task completion (10K+ scenarios, automated regression). ## Market Standing - **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not disclosed. - **Key Metric**: Total funding not disclosed (appears bootstrapped). Headcount: 17 employees (+360% YoY). Monthly website visits: ~14,071 (+116.3% monthly, +56,184% yearly). - **Notable Investors/Partners**: - Demonstrating first agentic payment transaction in Australia with **Mastercard** at the Australian Open 2026. - Benchmarking study with **Heidi Health** (cloud vs on‑premise inference). - **Growth Signals**: - 10 active job postings (quarterly increase +42.9%, yearly +150%). - LinkedIn followers: 4,468 (+315.6% yearly). - Traffic growth (56,184% yearly) and strong inbound interest from US (72%) and Australia (28%). - Partnership with Mastercard for a live agentic payment demo signals enterprise traction. ## Competitive Advantages - **Australian privacy by design**: Infrastructure and model behaviour aligned with Australian standards; transparency and user control emphasized. - **Research‑to‑production pipeline**: Tight integration between frontier research and a shipped product (Matilda). The research residency directly feeds into product improvements. - **Agentic safety**: Multi-step reasoning with visible steps, permission‑asking before action, and sandboxed execution – differentiating from black‑box chatbots. - **Own GPU hardware**: MC-2 cluster (AMD Instinct) allows full control over inference latency and cost. - **Talent magnet**: Small, high‑agency team attracts PhD‑level researchers with promise of publications and access to SOTA compute. ## Strategic Focus - Scale Matilda’s user base (currently private beta) and move toward general availability. - Deepen research in safety & alignment, long‑context reasoning, multimodal perception, agent orchestration, and model efficiency. - Expand enterprise partnerships (evidenced by Mastercard, Heidi Health). - Continue growing the team across engineering and research (10 open roles across infrastructure, product, and research). ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: “Small team doing hard things.” High ownership, move fast, ship without permission. Values: ownership, gradient (fast learning), range, speed, taste, humility. No ego, mission‑first. - **Work environment**: On‑site in Melbourne, Australia (some hybrid/remote possible with visits). Emphasis on craft and shipping. - **Research perks**: For researchers – paid residency, ability to publish at top venues (NeurIPS, etc.), access to dedicated GPU cluster, direct line to production. - **Engineering focus**: Modern tech stack (Python, PyTorch, CUDA, Kubernetes, Terraform, GCP); engineers work on inference infrastructure, model training, safety evals, and product features. - **Growth opportunity**: From 17 people to planned expansion; early employees can shape the direction of the product and research agenda. ## Sources 1. [maincode.com](https://maincode.com/) – Company website, product description, culture page 2. [LinkedIn – Maincode](https://au.linkedin.com/company/maincodehq) – Headcount, growth metrics, partner announcements 3. [Built In – Maincode Careers](https://builtin.com/company/maincode) – Culture summary and active job listings 4. [AI Directory – Maincode Pty Ltd](https://aidirectory.industry.gov.au/organisation/maincode-pty-ltd) – Business area and location verification 5. [maincode.com/platform](https://maincode.com/platform) – Detailed product and research area descriptions ## Other roles at Maincode - [Talent Sourcer](https://feeny.ai/job/talent-sourcer-maincode-melbourne-1y96x7ezwa0f) — Melbourne, Australia - [Psychology Researcher, Talent](https://feeny.ai/job/psychology-researcher-talent-maincode-melbourne-a14qj2zc6b6c) — Melbourne, Australia - [Forward-Deployed AI Engineer, Justice and Community Safety](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-ai-engineer-justice-and-community-safety-maincode-melbourne-72q4z3ny2v3d) — Melbourne, Australia - [Marketing Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/marketing-lead-maincode-melbourne-ejevmh3kfx3n) — Melbourne, Australia - [Forward-Deployed AI Engineer, Government and National Security](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-ai-engineer-government-and-national-security-maincode-canberra-hxax53shgchj) — Canberra, Australia - [Junior Commercial Counsel (AI & Technology)](https://feeny.ai/job/junior-commercial-counsel-ai-technology-maincode-melbourne-axbjnskc6y8h) — Melbourne, Australia - [Talent Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/talent-engineer-maincode-australia-kcyvhegegmtk) — Australia - [Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-maincode-seattle-8wcyg274fjcr) — Seattle, WA - [Research Engineer – Matilda](https://feeny.ai/job/research-engineer-matilda-maincode-melbourne-37p38pkx99xk) — Melbourne, Australia - [AI Software Engineer (Back End)](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-software-engineer-back-end-maincode-melbourne-nffdzzvrsdqk) — Melbourne, Australia