AI Research Scientist

at  Phaidra

ABOUT PHAIDRA

Phaidra is building the future of industrial automation.
The world today is filled with static, monolithic infrastructure. Factories, power plants, buildings, etc. operate the same they’ve operated for decades — because the controls programming is hard-coded. Thousands of lines of rules and heuristics that define how the machines interact with each other. The result of all this hard-coding is that facilities are frozen in time, unable to adapt to their environment while their performance slowly degrades.

Phaidra creates AI-powered control systems for the industrial sector, enabling industrial facilities to automatically learn and improve over time. Specifically:

• We use reinforcement learning algorithms to provide this intelligence, converting raw sensor data into high-value actions and decisions.
• We focus on industrial applications, which tend to be well-sensorized with measurable KPIs — perfect for reinforcement learning.
• We enable domain experts (our users) to configure the AI control systems (i.e. agents) without writing code. They define what they want their AI agents to do, and we do it for them.

Our team has a track record of applying AI to some of the toughest problems. From achieving superhuman performance with DeepMind’s AlphaGo, to reducing the energy required to cool Google’s Data Centers by 40%, we deeply understand AI and how to apply it in production for massive impact.
Phaidra is based in the USA but 100% remote; we do not have a physical office. We hire employees internationally with the help of our partner, OysterHR. Our team is currently located throughout the USA, Canada, UK, Norway, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Japan, Singapore, and India.

KEY QUALIFICATIONS

• Required: PhD in a technical field or equivalent practical experience, with demonstrated knowledge in one of the following:
• Reinforcement Learning
• Deep Learning
• Control Theory
• Multi-Agent RL
• Extensive research in the fields of (Model-Based, Model-Free, Safe) RL, Control Theory.
• Share our company values: curiosity, ownership, transparency & directness, outcome-based performance, and customer empathy.

PREFERRED SKILLS & EXPERIENCE

• A proven track record of publications.
• A real passion for AI and applying to industrial systems to improve resource efficiency.

• Design, implement and evaluate models, agents and software prototypes of perceptual processing.
• Report and present research findings and developments including status and results clearly and efficiently both internally and externally, verbally and in writing.
• Participate in and organize ambitious collaborative research projects.
• Work with external collaborators and maintain relationships with relevant research labs and key individuals as appropriate.
• Mentor and guide Research Engineers to apply research findings and developments to industrial domains.