AI Research Scientist, New Grad – Agents & Reinforcement Learning
Snowflake is hiring an AI Research Scientist, New Grad – Agents & Reinforcement Learning in Bellevue, United States. It pays $176k-$230k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Snowflake.
Level's read on this job
- On Level's scale, this research scientist role is Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
- Tools and skills the posting cites include PyTorch, JAX and Reinforcement learning.
- Level classifies it as a junior role.
- Level lists 353 other open roles at Snowflake.
AI in this role
Research and develop autonomous, self-improving AI systems and agents combining agentic AI and reinforcement learning.
At Snowflake, we are powering the era of the agentic enterprise. To usher in this new era, we seek AI-native thinkers across every function who are energized by the opportunity to reinvent how they work. You don’t just use tools; you possess an innate curiosity, treating AI as a high-trust collaborator that is core to how you solve problems and accelerate your impact. We look for low-ego individuals who thrive in dynamic and fast-moving environments and move with an experimental mindset — who rapidly test emerging capabilities to discover simpler, more powerful ways to deliver results. At Snowflake, your role isn't just to execute a function, but to help redefine the future of how work gets done.
At Snowflake, we are powering the era of the agentic enterprise. To usher in this new era, we seek AI-native thinkers across every function who are energized by the opportunity to reinvent how they work. You don't just use tools; you possess an innate curiosity, treating AI as a high-trust collaborator that is core to how you solve problems and accelerate your impact. We look for low-ego individuals who thrive in dynamic and fast-moving environments and move with an experimental mindset, rapidly testing emerging capabilities to discover simpler, more powerful ways to deliver results. At Snowflake, your role isn't just to execute a function, but to help redefine the future of how work gets done.
Snowflake is about empowering enterprises to achieve their full potential, and people too. With a culture that's all in on impact, innovation, and collaboration, Snowflake is the sweet spot for building big, moving fast, and taking technology and careers to the next level.
We are hiring an AI Research Scientist (New Grad) for our AI Research team. Our team is pushing the frontier of autonomous, self-improving AI systems — building agents that reason, code, and learn at scale inside the Snowflake Data Cloud. This role sits at the intersection of agentic AI and reinforcement learning, where your research will directly shape how enterprises leverage intelligent automation.
AS AN AI RESEARCH SCIENTIST AT SNOWFLAKE, YOU WILL:Design and develop agentic frameworks powered by recursive self-improvement loops, enabling AI systems that iteratively refine their own capabilities and strategies
Build and evaluate auto research agents — systems capable of autonomously formulating hypotheses, executing experiments, and synthesizing findings
Develop coding agents that understand, generate, and debug code across complex, multi-step programming tasks
Conduct research in reinforcement learning with a focus on RLHF, DPO, and PPO as mechanisms for aligning and improving agentic behaviors
Contribute to multi-agent systems where specialized agents collaborate, negotiate, and self-organize to solve enterprise-scale problems
Develop and curate training data pipelines — both synthetic and human-annotated — to support novel agentic and RL research domains
Publish research findings at top-tier venues such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, and ACL
PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or a closely related field (completing or recently completed; or equivalent research experience)
Foundational expertise in reinforcement learning algorithms, including RLHF, DPO, PPO, or multi-agent systems
Research experience in LLM post-training, fine-tuning, or reasoning model development
Demonstrated ability to implement and experiment with agentic architectures — including tool-use, planning, and self-correction loops
Proficiency in Python and at least one deep learning framework (PyTorch or JAX strongly preferred)
Strong mathematical and analytical foundation — comfortable working at the intersection of theory and empirical research
At least one first-author or co-authored publication or preprint in a relevant AI/ML area
Hands-on experience building or evaluating coding agents or auto research agents
Familiarity with recursive self-improvement frameworks or automated AI scientist paradigms
Experience with large-scale distributed training or efficient training paradigms
Background in mathematical reasoning, structured decision-making, or program synthesis
Exposure to domain-specific AI applications in healthcare, finance, or enterprise workflows
Snowflake's AI Research team operates at the frontier of what autonomous AI systems can do — not as a research lab disconnected from practice, but as a team where your work ships into a platform used by thousands of enterprises. You'll be working alongside researchers and engineers who are building the next generation of agentic infrastructure, with access to large-scale compute, real-world data challenges, and the shortest possible path from research idea to product impact.
For a new grad role, this is a rare opportunity to grow your research career while contributing to systems that actually run in production — shaping how AI agents reason, learn, and improve themselves inside the world's leading data cloud.
Snowflake is growing fast, and we’re scaling our team to help enable and accelerate our growth. We are looking for people who share our values, challenge ordinary thinking, and push the pace of innovation while building a future for themselves and Snowflake.
How do you want to make your impact?
For jobs located in the United States, please visit the job posting on the Snowflake Careers Site for salary and benefits information: careers.snowflake.com
How we rate this
AI Research Scientist, New Grad – Agents & Reinforcement Learning at Snowflake rates 95 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in research scientist jobs at this level
Pay
- This job starts at
- $176k
- Typical research scientist job
- $192k
This posting starts 8% below the typical research scientist job. See research scientist jobs
Questions you could be asked
- How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
- Walk me through fine-tuning a model: what data did you use, and how did you check the result?
- Tell me about a workflow you automated with AI tools, end to end.
- Tell me about a research question you investigated. What did you find?
- Tell me about a project where agentic frameworks was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, Fine-tuning, AI Automation, AI Research, and Agentic Frameworks. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.
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