RL Environments Architect
Surge AI is hiring an RL Environments Architect for a remote role open to applicants in United States. Level rates it ; you can apply on Surge AI.
Level's read on this job
- On Level's scale, this role is Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
- This is listed as a remote role.
- The posting mentions Anthropic, APIs and Simulators among its tools and skills.
- Level classes it as a senior role.
- Surge AI has 27 other open roles on Level.
AI in this role
Architect simulated environments and reward structures for reinforcement learning agent training.
About Us
Our mission is to raise AGI with the richness of human intelligence — curious, witty, imaginative, and full of unexpected brilliance.
Surge was founded by engineers and researchers who dreamed of building the next generation AI. We're building a platform that powers the most powerful models in the world in partnership with companies like Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and Meta.
At Surge, we believe the path to AGI isn't just about scaling compute—it's about embracing the unlimited ceiling of human intelligence and creativity in the data that shapes these systems. Our platform combines elite human expertise with cutting-edge tools for scalable oversight, from building rich RL environments to conducting rigorous evaluations that go beyond benchmarks. We've run a profitable business from day one without raising venture funding.
The Role
As an RL Environments Architect, you’ll design, instrument, and govern the simulated worlds where agents learn — from compact task microcosms to multi-agent, tool-using ecosystems. You’ll define the primitives, reward structures, interfaces, and telemetry that let us stress-test emerging capabilities while keeping training signals faithful, stable, and scalable.
Not only will you build environments, you’ll craft standards for data quality and reproducibility across large-scale agent gyms. This is a role for someone who sweats the details of simulation fidelity, thinks in terms of coverage and failure surfaces, and loves turning messy real-world phenomena into learnable curricula. Your work will form the backbone for safe, rapid progress in agentic systems.
What You'll Do
Architect a modular environment framework with clear APIs, curriculum scaffolds, and configurable reward/termination schemas
Establish quality bars: coverage metrics, invariance checks, and trace audits for environment outputs and agent experience buffers
Instrument rich telemetry for episode rollouts; mitigating reward hacking, mode collapse, and exploitable loopholes
Partner with researchers to translate real-world tasks into robust simulations, including synthetic data generators and evaluation suites
What We’re Looking for
Simulation & Systems Depth – Experience building RL environments or simulators (e.g., custom physics, multi-agent, tool APIs) with an eye for determinism, performance, and observability
Data Quality Leadership – Strong instincts for designing reward functions, scenario taxonomies, and QA pipelines that keep signals aligned and drift-free
Builder’s Mindset – Comfort collaborating across research and engineering to ship pragmatic, testable environments that evolve with model capabilities
How we rate this
RL Environments Architect at Surge AI rates 90 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
Questions you could be asked
- Tell me about a project where reinforcement learning was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where simulation was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where reward modeling was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where telemetry was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where system architecture was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Reinforcement learning, Simulation, Reward Modeling, Telemetry, and System Architecture. 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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