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Research Fellow

AfterQuerySan FranciscoResearch
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Salary
$16K per month
Job type
Full-time
Experience
Senior
Posted
15 Sept 2026
Status
Open · checked 7d ago

About this role

AfterQuery offers a Research Fellow position based in San Francisco for experienced researchers to spend 12 to 16 weeks on applied foundation model projects. This role suits professionals from artificial intelligence and other specialized disciplines looking to advance frontier AI capabilities through dedicated research and publication.

Role Overview

AfterQuery is an applied research lab located in San Francisco that curates data solutions for foundation model development. The Research Fellow program invites experienced researchers to join the office full-time for a duration of 12 to 16 weeks. Projects focus on areas such as data quality and composition, post-training methods, agent and foundation-model evaluation, and public benchmarks in coding and specialized domains like medicine, finance, law, and STEM. The primary objective is to produce joint publications or public benchmarks with weekly mentorship and access to compute resources, datasets, and human annotation support.

Key Responsibilities

Define and execute a full-time project aligned with personal interests and core research areas alongside an AfterQuery research mentor
Formulate research questions, design rigorous experiments, and analyze results
Develop necessary datasets, methods, evaluations, or benchmark assets for the project
Document methods and results clearly to ensure reproducibility with the research and engineering teams
Co-author a paper and work toward publication

Requirements

Significant academic, clinical, legal, or industry research experience
Clear technical communication and strong scientific writing skills
A strong record of research or publication with a demonstrated ability to take projects from scoping to reproducible results
Understanding of model evaluation and a focus on advancing frontier AI
Availability to work full-time in San Francisco for 12 to 16 weeks

Nice to Have

Publications at leading conferences or in peer-reviewed journals
PhD, MD, JD, or equivalent advanced degree in a relevant field, or status as a late-stage PhD candidate
Deep domain expertise in medicine, finance, law, STEM, or another specialized field
Availability of 20+ hours per week with in-person preference

Skills and Tools

Supervised fine-tuning
Reinforcement learning
Data composition and quality methods
Agent and foundation-model evaluation
Benchmark development

Salary and Benefits

Salary of $16K per month
Health insurance including medical, vision, and dental
401(k) with employer match
Daily UberEats stipend for daily meals
Monthly wellness stipend

About the Company

AfterQuery is an applied research lab that curates data solutions for foundation model development, serving frontier AI labs. The company is based in San Francisco and is backed by investors including Altos Ventures, BoxGroup, and Y Combinator, alongside angels from organizations such as Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta Superintelligence Labs, and Microsoft AI.

How to Apply

Interested candidates should apply on the official company careers page.

Skills and tech stack

Questions candidates ask

Where is the Research Fellow position located?

The role is located in the AfterQuery office in San Francisco.

What is the duration of the Research Fellow program?

The program lasts for 12 to 16 weeks of full-time, paid research.

What is the monthly compensation for this role?

The position offers a salary of $16K per month.

What are the core focus areas for research projects?

Focus areas include data quality and composition, post-training (supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning), agent and foundation-model evaluation, and public benchmarks in coding and specialized domains like medicine, finance, law, and STEM.

What is the ultimate goal of the research fellowship?

The goal is to develop the research work into a joint publication or public benchmark.

Ready to apply?

The application is on the official AfterQuery careers page.

Apply on company site