---
title: 'Research Engineer, Machine Learning at Basis Research Institute'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/research-engineer-machine-learning-basis-research-institute-new-york-yhd31tsyv85h'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Research Engineer, Machine Learning at Basis Research Institute

- **Company:** Basis Research Institute
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2025-02-05
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/basis-research/1e3dba92-ee3e-47c9-b321-695c3249479a

## Job description

## About Basis

[Basis](https://www.basis.ai) is a nonprofit applied AI research organization with two mutually reinforcing goals. The first is to understand and build intelligence. This means to establish the mathematical principles of what it means to reason, to learn, to make decisions, to understand, and to explain; and to construct software that implements these principles. The second is to advance society’s ability to solve intractable problems. This means expanding the scale, complexity, and breadth of problems that we can solve today, and even more importantly, accelerating our ability to solve problems in the future. To achieve these goals, we’re building both a new technological foundation that draws inspiration from how humans reason, and a new kind of collaborative organization that puts human values first.

## About the Role

Research engineers support Basis’ mission by translating research ideas into correct, robust, and scalable high-quality code. We seek individuals who excel technically and value probing concepts at their foundations. Our research engineers aspire to conduct rigorous, high-quality, robust science, unafraid to tinker, make mistakes, and explore radically different ideas to achieve this. Basis is a collaborative endeavor, both internally and with our external partners; we seek individuals who relish working with others on challenges larger than those they can tackle alone. Machine Learning Research Engineers This role targets experts in machine learning engineering. The core areas of ML research engineering include:

- Probabilistic programming and statistical inference
- Deep learning
- Causal inference
- Program synthesis and analysis
- ML Ops and systems engineering

These areas are honed within the context of building reasoning systems. Consequently, research engineers will also engage with topics such as programming language design and implementation, automatic differentiation, and SAT/SMT solvers, among others. We expect you to:

- Possess excellent programming and software engineering skills, especially in Julia, Python, C++, ML-family languages.
- Have demonstrated the ability to drive software projects from start to finish. This could be evidenced by open-source projects, technical reports, and publications.
- Be comfortable digesting research from PL and/or ML venues, such as PLDI, POPL, NeurIPS, or ICML.
- Progress with a high degree of autonomy and under uncertainty.
- Be enthusiastic about solving real-world problems and making a positive societal impact.
- Have demonstrated significant technical achievements within ML engineering. Examples include:
- You've implemented variants of newly published techniques from scratch.
- You built systems and workflows for training large models distributed across many machines.
- You've built systems that span all levels of the programming stack from high-level API infrastructure to close-to-the-metal code.

In addition, the following would be an advantage:

- A PhD (or equivalent experience) in technical areas including: statistics, programming languages, machine learning, computational neuroscience, cognitive science, physics, mathematics.

Responsibilities:

- Translate research ideas into correct, robust, and scalable high-quality code.
- Engage in programming language design/implementation.
- Performance engineering, scaling research code.
- Algorithm development.
- Contribute to the culture and direction of Basis.
- (Optionally) Publish and present findings in journals and conferences.

## Role Details

Exceptional candidates who may not meet all of the following criteria are still encouraged to apply.

- FT/PT: This is a full-time position
- Hours: While we prioritize in-person collaboration for its benefits to creative work, there is a degree of flexibility in your working hours. Be prepared to attend multi-day Basis-wide in-person events.
- Location: This role is in-person in either New York City or Boston.
- Salary range: Competitive salary and bonuses

Non-Discrimination Notice Basis Research Institute provides equal employment opportunities without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, or genetics and prohibits discrimination based on all protected characteristics.

Privacy Notice By submitting your application, you grant Basis permission to use your materials for both hiring evaluation and recruitment-related research and development purposes. Your information may be processed in different countries, including the US. You retain copyright while providing Basis a license to use these materials for the stated purposes. Read our full Global Data Privacy Notice [here](https://www.basis.ai/join-us/privacy-notice/).

## About Basis Research Institute

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Basis Research Institute is a nonprofit applied research organization advancing artificial intelligence through probabilistic modeling and causal inference to solve society's most intractable problems, building open-source software that draws inspiration from human reasoning.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Nonprofit 501(c)(3) Research Institute)
- **Headquarters**: New York City, New York, USA (with additional office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA)
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Zenna Tavares, Emily Mackevicius, and Eli Bingham

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Artificial Intelligence Research & Development
- **Target customers**: Municipal governments (via consulting), academic collaborators, for-profit companies (via contract work), and the broader open-source AI community
- **Mission**: Two mutually reinforcing goals: (1) advance basic scientific research in artificial intelligence to understand and build intelligence, and (2) help solve society’s intractable problems by expanding the scale, complexity, and breadth of problems that can be solved

## Products & Services
- **Core Technology Development**: Advanced probabilistic modeling and causal inference frameworks implemented as open-source software, including causal probabilistic programming languages
- **Applied Challenge Projects**:
  - **AI-Driven Robot Design**: Using AI to automate and accelerate robot design and control
  - **Dynamical Modeling for Biological Systems**: Modeling complex biological processes (e.g., neuroscience, cellular dynamics)
  - **Participatory City Modeling**: Consulting with municipal governments to model urban systems and support data-driven policy decisions
  - **Modeling, Abstraction, and Reasoning Agent (MARA)**: A research project focused on building AI agents capable of abstract reasoning and world modeling
- **Postdoctoral Fellowship Program**: A fellowship for early-career scientists to direct their own research within Basis’s mission
- **Open-Source Software Releases**: Publishing research tools and libraries for the broader AI community

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not applicable (nonprofit research organization)
- **Key Metric**: Funded through a combination of research grants, private philanthropy, and contract work with partners; specific funding amounts are not publicly disclosed
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Supported by an advisory board including Armando Solar-Lezama (MIT), Joshua Tenenbaum (MIT), Kevin Ellis (Cornell), Anthony Philippakis (Broad Institute), and Rui Costa (Columbia University). Collaborates with academic institutions (MIT, Columbia, Cornell, NYU) and municipal governments
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount has grown 41.7% year-over-year (LinkedIn data); active job postings increased 107.1% year-over-year; expanding into London with a GTM Lead role; 29 active job openings as of mid-2026

## Competitive Advantages
- **Nonprofit Structure**: Unlike for-profit AI labs, Basis is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, enabling it to prioritize open-source, public-good research over commercial outcomes
- **Unique Research Cycle**: A structured cycle between core technology development and applied challenge projects, where insights from real-world problems feed back into foundational research
- **Interdisciplinary Approach**: Combines insights from cognitive science (human reasoning), computer science (probabilistic programming), and domain expertise (biology, urban planning, robotics)
- **High-Profile Advisory Board**: Advisors from leading institutions (MIT, Cornell, Broad Institute, Columbia) provide deep academic and scientific credibility
- **Open-Source Commitment**: All software is released as open-source, building community trust and enabling broad adoption

## Strategic Focus
- **Core AI Foundations**: Advancing probabilistic modeling, causal inference, program synthesis, neuro-symbolic methods, reinforcement learning, and world models
- **Challenge-Driven Research**: Using applied projects (robotics, biology, city modeling) to identify shared bottlenecks that guide further methodological research
- **Collaborative Expansion**: Actively seeking partnerships with academia, government, social sector, and industry to tackle high-impact problems
- **Geographic Growth**: Opening presence in London (UK/EU GTM) and expanding roles in Ithaca, NY, while maintaining NYC and Cambridge hubs
- **Open-Source Ecosystem**: Building durable foundations that enable other researchers and practitioners to build upon Basis’s work

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-Driven Culture**: Employees work on problems that matter beyond publications, with impact on AI science and real-world societal challenges
- **Autonomy and Growth**: Organizational structure allows employees to see their autonomy and responsibilities grow with their projects, distinct from traditional career ladders
- **Collaborative Environment**: Work alongside researchers from top institutions (MIT, Columbia, Cornell) and domain experts from academia, government, and industry
- **Open-Source Impact**: Ship high-quality open-source software used by thousands, contributing to the broader AI community
- **Locations**: Offices in NYC (primary) and Cambridge, MA, with remote flexibility for some roles; London expansion underway
- **Notable Perks**: Postdoctoral fellowships available for early-career scientists; focus on human values and collaborative organization
- **Engineering Culture**: Emphasis on building durable foundations, shipping production-quality code, and working at the intersection of research and engineering

## Sources
1. [basis.ai/about](https://www.basis.ai/about/)
2. [basis.ai](https://www.basis.ai/)
3. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/basis-research](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/basis-research)
4. [basis.ai/join-us](https://www.basis.ai/join-us/)
5. [LinkedIn - Basis Research Institute](https://www.linkedin.com/company/basis-ri)

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