Role Overview

Surge AI is hiring a Research Engineer to build and run systems that train and evaluate frontier AI coding models. The role combines software engineering, training data, agentic evaluation, and technical system design.

You’ll manage end-to-end coding data projects for AI labs, including task design, RL environments, evaluation methods, and technical infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Own coding data projects from scoping and pilot design through execution, iteration, and scale-up.

• Design agentic training workflows and tasks that reflect real-world software engineering, including debugging, refactoring, code review, large-repository navigation, and tool use.

• Develop and refine rubrics, golden sets, and reward signals that measure meaningful engineering performance.

• Evaluate data and worker output against high software engineering standards.

• Design and run coding assessments and qualification processes for workers.

• Set up or collaborate on technical environments such as containers, repositories, test harnesses, sandboxes, and code-execution infrastructure.

• Work with client technical teams to translate training objectives into concrete projects and environments.

• Collaborate with Surge engineering, product, and operations teams to improve coding data products, tools, and processes.

Requirements

• 3–6+ years of professional software engineering experience building and maintaining real systems.

• Strong coding skills in at least one mainstream programming language.

• Experience working with production codebases.

• Strong engineering judgment focused on correctness and code quality.

• Ability to troubleshoot technical environments, including containers, dependencies, and automated testing.

• Ability to own projects from scoping through execution and continuous improvement.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

• Ability to work effectively with senior client engineers and translate unclear goals into actionable plans.

• Interest in AI/ML systems, training data, evaluation, and reward design for agentic coding.