About this role
Summary: The Conceptual Reasoning Capabilities Researcher evaluates and improves AI reasoning in philosophical and strategic domains. Responsibilities include creating datasets, building model scaffolds, running training experiments, and managing researcher relationships.
About Redwood Research
At Redwood Research, we strive to ensure the safe development of artificial intelligence through rigorous technical research, thoughtful analysis, and strategic advising.
About the role
The Conceptual Reasoning Capabilities (CRC) team works on evaluating and improving AI at conceptual reasoning: reasoning about the kinds of questions commonly found in philosophy, AI strategy, and AI safety that don't have a (practically) verifiable answer and where progress comes from argumentation. We think answering these questions well is the skill AIs most urgently need to help with mitigating AI risk.
The bulk of our work is creating datasets. Depending on your skills and experience, you might also build scaffolds for models, run training experiments, come up with new project ideas, communicate our research and theory of impact, manage other researchers, or help manage our relationships with AI labs and other stakeholders.
Explore our past work at [conceptualreasoning.ai](https://conceptualreasoning.ai/).
Requirements
- Clear thinking in conceptual domains: We are looking for people who are unusually sharp at written argumentation. A strong candidate can easily assess the logical validity of an argument and weigh the strength of fuzzy, hard-to-formalize arguments.
- Grit: Our projects require the willingness to spend a lot of time grinding through tasks such as carefully evaluating dozens of LLM-written arguments or manually writing rubrics with hundreds of items.
- A deep interest in either AI risk or acausal interactions
Preferred skills
- Conceptual creativity: The ability to develop novel ideas and arguments
- Experience in a conceptual domain
- Experience interacting with LLMs: using coding agents, building scaffolds, or engineering prompts
- Strong communication and collaboration skills
- Experience training LLMs
- Management experience
How we hire
Our application process includes work tests and interviews. In most cases we will not offer a full-time position immediately, but instead offer a 4-month work trial.
If you think you meet the requirements, please apply even if you lack the preferred skills.
*We are committed to diversity and equal opportunity in all aspects of our hiring process. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We welcome and encourage all qualified candidates to apply for our open positions.*
*We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.*