Reinforcement Learning Engineer

Hammerhead AI•Redwood City, CA

19h

About The Position

As a Reinforcement Learning Engineer, you will be the architect of the core intelligence for Hammerhead’s ORCA platform. Reporting to the Head of AI / Reinforcement Learning Engineering, you will design, train, and deploy the Orchestrated RL Control Agents that form the brain of our system, making real-time decisions to optimize power and compute resources across physical data centers. This role is for a hands-on expert who is passionate about applying cutting-edge RL research to complex, real-world industrial systems. You will be instrumental in developing the models that control physical assets like cooling systems and power distribution units to unlock massive efficiency gains in AI workloads.

Requirements

Proven experience developing and implementing reinforcement learning algorithms, demonstrated through publications in top conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR), open-source contributions, or shipped products.
3+ years of experience applying RL to real-world problems, preferably in industrial automation, robotics, autonomous vehicles, energy systems, or other physical systems.
Deep proficiency in Python and modern ML frameworks such as PyTorch, Jax, or TensorFlow.
MS or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Operations Research, or a related field with a focus on machine learning or control theory.
Strong theoretical background but driven by practical application, with an ability to bridge the gap between RL theory and the constraints of physical, real-world systems.

Nice To Haves

Experience from a leading industrial or academic RL lab is highly desirable.
Experience with simulation platforms and RL libraries (e.g., Ray RLlib, Isaac Gym) is a plus.

Responsibilities

Design and implement advanced reinforcement learning algorithms (e.g., multi-agent RL, model-based RL, deep RL) for real-time control of data center infrastructure.
Build and train RL agents that can generalize to real-world, physical systems.
Lead the transition of RL models from research and simulation to live deployment within the ORCA platform, ensuring stability and performance on mission-critical hardware.
Analyze agent performance to continuously improve control strategies for tasks like peak shaving, workload shifting, and thermal management.
Partner with platform engineers to define the APIs, data telemetry, and infrastructure needed to support and scale our RL agents across a global portfolio of data centers.