# Research Scientist, Scaling RL at Periodic Labs

- Company: Periodic Labs
- What the company does: From bits to atoms. Backed by Accel, Lightspeed and a16z.
- Company website: https://periodic.com/
- Type: Startups (AI role)
- Level: Mid level
- Location: Menlo Park, CA; Montreal, Canada
- Work setup: On-site
- Pay: $225K to $350K base salary per year (USD)
- Posted: 2026-10-01
- Apply by: 2026-11-23
- Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/periodic-labs/20b122c9-b8ec-4fb0-aaf4-9b45902affe0?utm_source=1752vc&utm_medium=careers
- Page: https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/periodic-labs-research-scientist-scaling-rl/

## About the role

We're training frontier models to develop deep scientific knowledge and reasoning for scientific tasks. You’ll study how RL scales with training compute, develop better algorithms, and take ideas from controlled experiments to our largest runs like Periodic Neon . Design experiments to understand how RL performance scales with compute, model size, data, and reward quality, building on work such as ScaleRL Found on 1752vc Careers, the job board for startup and VC roles.

## What they're looking for

- Hands-on experience training LLMs with reinforcement learning
- Strong attention to detail and rigorous approach to answer questions scientifically
- Coming up with small-scale RL setups that transfers to large-scale training runs
- Comfort working across a complex training stack to implement, debug, and test new research ideas
- We are open to offering a 1 year post-doc for this profile. Early career (final year PhD students) are encouraged to apply

Tags: Engineering

Source: 1752vc Careers, https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/periodic-labs-research-scientist-scaling-rl/