Senior Staff Research Scientist, Agentic AI & RL

Centific

About The Position

Centific is seeking a Staff Research Scientist, Agentic AI & Reinforcement Learning. This dual-track role is designed for exceptional technical leaders who want to drive deep hands-on impact while growing their influence across research, engineering, and product. The role is suitable for individuals whose strength lies in individual technical contribution at the highest level or leading a small, elite team of researchers and engineers. The successful candidate will be a key architect of Centific’s Agentic AI and RL platform, responsible for designing and building governed RL environments, LLM post-training pipelines, and agentic reasoning systems that power enterprise AI products. This position bridges cutting-edge research and production-grade delivery, setting the technical bar for the team and translating complex requirements into systems that work at scale. It is a high-ownership, high-autonomy role where the individual will define how things are built, mentor others, and be accountable for technical outcomes. The ideal candidate is deeply technical, entrepreneurially minded, and comfortable writing production code, reviewing research, and shaping technical direction with stakeholders. The role offers two tracks: IC Track (Senior Staff Engineer) where the individual is the deepest technical expert, owning architecture, setting implementation standards, and driving technical outcomes personally and through influence, with informal mentoring of 1-2 engineers; and Manager Track (Senior Manager) where the individual leads a focused team of 4-8 Research Scientists and RL Engineers, remaining deeply technical while also hiring, mentoring, and managing the team’s delivery and growth, and being accountable for both people and technical outcomes.

Requirements

Exceptional technical leadership
Deep hands-on impact capability
Ability to drive influence across research, engineering, and product
Deep technical expertise (IC Track)
Ability to own architecture (IC Track)
Ability to set implementation standards (IC Track)
Ability to drive breakthrough technical outcomes personally and through influence (IC Track)
Ability to informally mentor 1-2 engineers (IC Track)
Ability to lead a focused team of 4-8 Research Scientists and RL Engineers (Manager Track)
Ability to remain deeply technical (Manager Track)
Ability to review code (Manager Track)
Ability to shape architecture (Manager Track)
Ability to set research direction (Manager Track)
Ability to hire, mentor, and manage team delivery and growth (Manager Track)
Accountability for people and technical outcomes (Manager Track)
Deeply technical mindset
Entrepreneurial mindset
Comfort writing production code
Comfort reviewing research
Comfort shaping technical direction with stakeholders

Responsibilities

Design and build governed RL environments
Develop LLM post-training pipelines
Create agentic reasoning systems that power enterprise AI products
Bridge cutting-edge research and production-grade delivery
Set the technical bar for the team
Translate complex requirements into systems that work at scale
Define how things are built
Mentor those around you
Be accountable for technical outcomes
Write production code
Review research
Shape technical direction with stakeholders
Own architecture (IC Track)
Set implementation standards (IC Track)
Drive breakthrough technical outcomes personally and through influence (IC Track)
Informally mentor 1-2 engineers (IC Track)
Lead a focused team of 4-8 Research Scientists and RL Engineers (Manager Track)
Review code (Manager Track)
Set research direction (Manager Track)
Hire, mentor, and manage the team’s delivery and growth (Manager Track)