--- title: 'AI Researcher at Maincode' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/ai-researcher-maincode-melbourne-vqv3ed5n9gd9' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-11' --- # AI Researcher at Maincode - **Company:** Maincode - **Location:** Melbourne, Australia - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-03-05 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/maincode/5479b754-01ce-43c3-9d59-eb0b712ca662 ## Job description ## About Maincode Maincode is an AI research and engineering company. We build Matilda, Australia's large language model, trained, served and deployed in Melbourne. We run our own GPUs in local data centres and we build everything above them: training and serving systems, model code, evaluations, and the products that use them. We are training the next version of Matilda on it and serving the current version to the public. ## About the role You will decide, with the team, how the next Matilda is built. You will design architecture and training changes, run controlled experiments on our cluster, analyse the logs, and turn the results into decisions. You work directly with the engineers who run training. This is an engineering role. Research here means writing the code, running the experiments, reading the logs, and writing the note that says what changed and why. If you do not want to write production code, this is not the role. ## What you would actually do - Design and test architecture, objective and training-regime changes for a large language model. - Run controlled experiments at scale and identify what caused the result. - Study failure modes in reasoning, generalisation and representation. - Build evaluations that measure capability and reliability, not only benchmark scores. - Write short internal notes that turn results, including negative ones, into design decisions. ## What we are looking for Deep fundamentals. You understand transformers at the level of mechanism: attention variants, positional encodings, normalisation, optimisers, tokenisation, data mixtures, and how each affects the loss and the model's behaviour. You can diagnose a training run from its logs. You know the pre-training and evaluation literature well enough to disagree with parts of it, and you have tested some of those disagreements yourself. Production-quality Python and PyTorch or JAX is assumed. Experience with multi-node distributed training is useful but not required. What this role is not Not product research. Not prompt engineering. Not fine-tuning someone else's model or building on an external API. Not a role measured by publications. Note Full time, Melbourne, in person. We cannot offer visa sponsorship; you need existing and unrestricted work rights in Australia. ## 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 - [AI Research Resident](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-research-resident-maincode-australia-ketgdbs6fjy8) — Australia - [Research Engineer – Matilda](https://feeny.ai/job/research-engineer-matilda-maincode-melbourne-37p38pkx99xk) — Melbourne, Australia