---
title: 'Member of Technical Staff, Staff Physicist at FirstPrinciples'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-staff-physicist-firstprinciples-ontario-x0191pdsxs7r'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-16'
---

# Member of Technical Staff, Staff Physicist at FirstPrinciples

- **Company:** FirstPrinciples
- **Location:** Ontario, Canada
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2025-12-19
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-16
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/firstprinciples/43bf3813-1d50-46f8-8e67-c7f64f999adc

## Job description

## About FirstPrinciples

FirstPrinciples is building AI to accelerate scientific discovery. Our core product is the Theo Platform, a research environment built to help researchers iterate faster, validate rigorously, and reach verified results they can trust. We're a fast-growing, remote-first team of builders, researchers, engineers, and thinkers working across Canada, the US, the UK, and expanding globally. What brings us together is a shared curiosity about how the universe works, and a belief that we can build systems that help us explore it more effectively. We spend our time working on questions that don't have clear answers, like how to design AI that can reason through scientific problems, and how the scientific process as a whole might evolve. This is work that sits somewhere between creativity and rigorous thinking, and often requires comfort with ambiguity and iteration. If you're someone who enjoys tackling big, abstract problems and exploring ideas that don't yet have a defined path forward, you'll likely find the work here interesting.

Why This Role Exists: We are building an AI Physicist, but there is no established way to define, evaluate, or measure high-quality research when AI is part of the system. This role exists to bring deep domain expertise to shape how the system learns, what “good” looks like, and how we benchmark progress, ensuring the outputs are scientifically rigorous, meaningful, and advance the field.

What You’ll Do:

- Review and critique the model's reasoning in physics, identifying subtle conceptual errors and invalid assumptions.
- Provide clear corrections, alternative derivations, and minimal counterexamples to shape what “good” scientific reasoning looks like.
- Translate domain expertise into actionable improvements for model behaviour, reasoning patterns, and tool usage.
- Create gold-standard solutions and reference outputs for training and fine-tuning.
- Rank and evaluate model outputs to improve scientific reasoning through expert feedback loops.
- Help build and operate our external Collaborators program, coordinating expert review cycles and integrating feedback into training and evaluation.
- Contribute to high-quality research outputs (benchmarks, datasets, technical reports, preprints) that meet publishable standards.

Who You Are:

- PhD in Physics, or a closely related field, with postdoctoral-level research maturity.
- Proven ability to reason at a research level in physics and rigorously critique proofs, derivations, and scientific arguments.
- Strong scientific programming skills (Python) and experience with research tooling (Git, LaTeX).
- Clear, precise communicator with a strong ability to translate complex ideas into sharp critiques, guidance, and evaluation frameworks.
- Comfortable working in a fast-moving, cross-functional environment with researchers and engineers.
- Mission-driven, with an entrepreneurial mindset and interest in tackling foundational problems in science.

What You’ll Get:

- The opportunity to work on foundational problems at the intersection of AI and physics.
- A high-trust, low-bureaucracy environment with real ownership.
- Remote-first work with flexibility in how you structure your day.
- Exposure to cutting-edge ideas across AI, scientific discovery, and emerging technologies.
- A culture that values curiosity, depth of thinking, and first-principles reasoning.
- The chance to contribute to work aimed at advancing fundamental science.

## About FirstPrinciples

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: FirstPrinciples is a non-profit, AI-first research organization building an autonomous AI Physicist to accelerate fundamental physics discovery and advance humanity’s understanding of nature.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Non-profit) – funded by philanthropic grants (e.g., John Templeton Foundation)
- **Headquarters**: Toronto, Canada
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Ildar Shar

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Research Services / AI / Fundamental Physics
- **Target customers**: The scientific community and research institutions (B2 science); operates as a mission-driven open-science platform, not a commercial vendor.
- **Mission**: To unlock the transformative potential of fundamental science by building an open, autonomous research engine (the AI Physicist) that can generate and test novel theoretical frameworks – with a goal of unifying quantum field theory and general relativity by 2035.

## Products & Services
- **Theo (AI Physicist)**: An open-source, autonomous research engine that combines AI, symbolic reasoning, and self-directed research capabilities to explore theoretical physics and produce novel insights.
- **FirstPrinciples Fellowship Program**: A fixed-term, fully remote program for PhD/postdoctoral researchers in ML and physics to build core modules of the AI Physicist and help establish open scientific infrastructure.
- **Theo Collaborators Program**: A selective research collaboration that brings expert physicists into direct engagement with Theo to evaluate and improve its scientific reasoning.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Funding**: Not applicable (non‑profit). Received a philanthropic grant from the **John Templeton Foundation** – early institutional support for the AI Physicist.
- **Key Metric**: 27 employees (as of mid‑2026), with **140% year‑over-year headcount growth**; 7,042 LinkedIn followers.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: John Templeton Foundation; Scientific Advisory Board includes **Victor Galitski** (inaugural member) and **Yang-Hui He** (mathematical physicist).
- **Growth Signals**: Rapid team expansion (140% YoY), launch of Fellowship Program (January 2026), fully remote global operations with presence in Canada, US, and Belgium.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Mission‑driven, non‑profit, open‑source** model attracts top AI and physics talent who want impact over profit.
- **Long‑term vision** (2035 breakthrough) combined with startup‑like speed and iteration.
- **Unique interdisciplinary approach** – merges cutting‑edge AI with rigorous theoretical physics, guided by a world‑class Scientific Advisory Board.
- **Autonomous research loops** that go beyond data analysis to actively generate and test new scientific ideas.

## Strategic Focus
- Building and scaling the AI Physicist to achieve a breakthrough in fundamental physics (unification of QFT & GR).
- Expanding the research community through fellowships and collaborative programs (Theo Collaborators).
- Developing open scientific infrastructure and establishing new standards for AI‑driven discovery.
- Deepening collaborations with leading physicists and institutions.

## Why Work Here
- **Remote‑first culture** – a global collective where engineers, physicists, and AI researchers collaborate asynchronously.
- **Startup energy with non‑profit purpose** – fast iteration, low hierarchy, and direct impact on science.
- **Flexible work** – primarily remote; some hybrid options in Toronto.
- **Notable perks** (from careers page): fully remote positions available, entrepreneurial environment, and the chance to work on one of the most ambitious AI‑science projects today.
- **Roles available** (as of mid‑2026): MTS in DevOps/Infrastructure, Engineering, Research; Staff Physicist (Quantum Information); Training Engineer (Large Scale Foundation Models); Human‑AI Interaction Designer; Strategic Partnerships Manager; etc.

## Sources
1. [greenhouse.io](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/firstprinciples)
2. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/firstprinciples-foundation)
3. [linkedin.com](https://ca.linkedin.com/company/firstprinciplesfoundation)
4. [firstprinciples.org – Press](https://www.firstprinciples.org/press)
5. [firstprinciples.org – Fellowship announcement](https://www.firstprinciples.org/article/firstprinciples-launches-fellowship-program-for-researchers-in-ai-and-physics)

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