AI Engineer / Research Scientist (Senior, Staff), Explainable AI

Seekr • Austin, TX

4h • Hybrid

About The Position

Seekr builds trusted AI for mission-critical decisions. Our platform helps organizations build, govern, and deploy secure, explainable AI rooted in their own data across cloud, on-premises, edge, and air-gapped environments. We care deeply about transparency, auditability, and defensibility because high-stakes AI is only useful when people can understand and trust how it behaves. The first wave of AI was about scale. The frontier now is reliable AI: systems that are not only capable, but understandable, testable, and dependable in real decisions. At Seekr, explainability is not a reporting layer added after deployment; it is a core product and research problem spanning attribution, evaluation, observability, contestability, and governance. This role sits directly in that high-impact space, helping turn state-of-the-art ideas into production capabilities customers can trust. We are open to candidates from either research scientist or engineering backgrounds. Success in this role requires strength in one domain, and working fluency in the other.

Requirements

• Strong background in machine learning and modern AI systems, including LLM/VLMs, agent frameworks, RAG, or adjacent applied ML systems.
• Strong Python and software engineering fundamentals, with comfort in testing, code review, CI/CD, debugging, and performance analysis.
• Ability to move comfortably between research and engineering.
• Scientists here should be able to write production-grade code when needed; engineers here should be able to prototype and pressure-test systems inspired by state-of-the-art papers.
• Experience designing experiments, evaluating ambiguous technical tradeoffs, and using evidence to guide decisions.
• Familiarity with AI coding assistants and the modern developer workflows they enable.
• Clear communication and strong collaboration across technical and non-technical partners.

Nice To Haves

• Experience designing AI systems with human oversight, review, approval, or override workflows.
• Familiarity with governance, provenance, security, and auditability requirements for enterprise or government AI.
• Experience deploying AI across cloud, on-prem, edge, or air-gapped environments.

Responsibilities

• Design and build explainability capabilities that help users understand why a model or agent produced a given output and what training data, context, tools, agent interactions, or prior steps influenced that result.
• Translate and synthesize promising ideas from current literature into prototypes, and translate promising prototypes into production-grade features.
• Build rigorous evaluation frameworks for explanation quality with respect to dimensions such as faithfulness, sufficiency, consistency, and plausibility.
• Write clear, maintainable code with tests, benchmarks, documentation, and instrumentation.
• Work across the full AI lifecycle, from data preparation and experimentation to fine-tuning, inference, deployment, and monitoring.
• Partner with product, platform, design, and customer-facing teams to make explainability useful in real workflows, not just technically interesting.
• Use AI coding assistants effectively as part of a modern engineering workflow while maintaining strong judgment and code quality.

Benefits

• Meaningful Mission & Impact - Work with a deeply talented, collaborative team solving some of the toughest AI challenges that matter.
• Equity Ownership – RSUs that let you share directly in Seekr’s long‑term success and growth.
• Time Off That Respects Real Life – Unlimited PTO plus 14 paid company holidays to truly recharge.
• Work Your Way – A flexible hybrid work environment with offices in Reston, VA and Austin, TX, plus remote options and flexible working hours.
• Competitive Total Rewards – A role‑appropriate compensation structure that supports long‑term growth, including base salary, bonuses, or commission plans depending on role.
• 401(k) with Company Match – Build your future with a retirement plan that includes employer matching.
• Comprehensive Health & Wellness – Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance coverage starting day one—for you and your family.
• Parental Leave – Paid parental leave to support employees as they welcome a new child through birth, adoption, or foster placement.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior