Research Scientist jobs in California

Descript

San Francisco, CA · $197,000 – $262,500 · Remote

This is a research scientist role focused on building multimodal AI systems that help an editing agent understand video and audio content the way human editors do. The role suits someone with a strong deep learning background who wants to work on specialized models that ship to production, from research concept through to features used by millions of creators.

Listed on Descript’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Deepgram

San Francisco, CA · $150,000 – $250,000 · Remote

You'll lead research into latent space models for voice AI, tackling fundamental challenges in audio compression, generative speech synthesis, and data efficiency. This role suits researchers who thrive on unsolved problems, move rapidly between theory and implementation, and want to pioneer entirely new approaches to making voice AI accessible at scale.

Listed on Deepgram’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Menlo Ventures Portfolio

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $300,000 – $320,000

Anthropic seeks a medicinal chemist to lead hands-on synthesis and characterization work for their life sciences research group, designing and testing small molecules informed by AI. You'll bridge computational predictions and wet-lab validation, working across chemistry, AI research, and external partners to accelerate drug discovery.

Listed on Menlo Ventures Portfolio’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Pika Labs

Internship · Palo Alto, CA

Pika is seeking research interns to work on video generation model training and optimization, contributing to mid-training and post-training efforts for their generative systems. This role suits students and researchers with hands-on video generation experience who want to apply machine learning to multimedia generation at scale.

Listed on Pika Labs’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Labelbox

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $200,000 – $300,000

This role embeds research scientists directly into client engagements at frontier AI labs, where you'll validate data strategies through rapid experimentation and fine-tuning rather than pursuing months-long research questions. It suits researchers who thrive on applied problems, client interaction, and delivering publishable results within weeks.

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Menlo Ventures Portfolio

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $405,000 – $485,000

This role involves researching how AI models can reliably perform security tasks, then working with engineers to turn those capabilities into products that non-expert security teams can actually use. You'll design evaluations, build datasets, prototype rapidly, and help the company decide what security features to build next.

Listed on Menlo Ventures Portfolio’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Pika Labs

Palo Alto, CA · $185,000 – $400,000

Pika is seeking a senior research scientist to advance their real-time multimodal generation platform, developing post-training techniques for foundation models across text, image, audio, and video. This role suits accomplished researchers with a track record of publishing in top venues and hands-on experience scaling large multimodal models in production.

Listed on Pika Labs’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Menlo Ventures Portfolio

San Francisco, CA · $300,000 – $320,000

This role brings computational biology expertise to Anthropic's life sciences research group, building analysis pipelines and working alongside experimental biologists to drive AI-accelerated scientific discovery. It suits researchers with deep computational biology experience who want to shape how AI transforms biological research at scale.

Listed on Menlo Ventures Portfolio’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Menlo Ventures Portfolio

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $300,000 – $320,000

This role involves building machine learning tools and evaluation frameworks to help Claude assist with real biological research workflows, from bioinformatics to drug discovery. It suits someone with both computational biology expertise and production software engineering skills who has shipped tools that practicing scientists actually use.

Listed on Menlo Ventures Portfolio’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Menlo Ventures Portfolio

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $300,000 – $405,000

A researcher or engineer combining molecular biology expertise with machine learning to design safety systems that prevent frontier AI models from enabling biological harm while remaining useful to legitimate life scientists. This suits someone with deep knowledge of modern biology and scientific programming who wants to apply that expertise to AI safety evaluation and classifier development.

Listed on Menlo Ventures Portfolio’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Menlo Ventures Portfolio

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $350,000 – $850,000

This role involves developing methods to understand how large language models work by analyzing their learned algorithms and building interpretability tools. It suits researchers with a strong scientific background who want to contribute to AI safety through mechanistic understanding and enjoy collaborative, experimental science.

Listed on Menlo Ventures Portfolio’s careers site · Apply there ↗