Principal AI Research Scientist: Designing Multi-Scale Intelligence for the Energy Transition

About the role

Ready to help shape the next frontier of AI by designing intelligent systems that reason across nested scales—from buildings to cities to nations—to accelerate the global energy transition. Open Earth Foundation (OEF) is a non-profit research and development organization building open digital infrastructure for planetary stewardship.

Responsibilities

• Set the AI research direction: Define and drive NEST’s agenda for agentic, probabilistic, and multi-scale intelligence across coupled models.
• Co-design nested agents, advanced agent architectures, and the agentic research processes that make cross-scale coupling possible.
• Explore hierarchical agents, latent-state representations, world models, and uncertainty-aware methods that remain consistent across spatial, temporal, and organizational scales.
• Turn original research ideas into working prototypes and research instruments through hands-on experimentation and rapid iteration.
• Hand promising designs and coupling strategies to the Lead Full-Stack AI Engineer to harden into the production platform.
• Partner with the Active Inference Scientist so the intelligence architecture and Bayesian inference layer—including factor graphs, message passing, and convergence—fit together.
• Define standards for reproducibility, validation, posterior predictive checks, and comparison with established model couplings and benchmarks.
• Shape NEST’s long-term scientific vision and communicate the research through publications, presentations, and external collaborations.

Qualifications

• PhD advancing the AI/ML field with a track record of original contributions in architectures, reasoning frameworks, or research methodologies—not only applications of existing models.
• Deep expertise in probabilistic reasoning, Bayesian methods, machine learning, or related approaches for uncertainty-aware AI systems.
• A record of turning ambitious ideas into rigorous research and impactful outcomes.
• Hands-on ability to translate research into working prototypes through experimentation and rapid iteration.
• Deep technical understanding of modern AI systems and agentic architectures.
• A deep commitment to safe, beneficial AI and using AI for the good of humanity.
• Strong written and verbal English communication skills.
• Strong Preference: Interest in world models, scientific AI, structured reasoning systems, or multi-scale reasoning.
• LLM agent architectures, nested or multi-agent design, and tool-use frameworks.
• Familiarity with energy systems, climate science, or scientific computing.

Other

• Actively participate in team building and culture-development activities at Open Earth Foundation.
• Contribute to an open, collaborative research culture grounded in rigor, curiosity, and shared purpose.

Compensation and Benefits

This full-time position offers compensation of $80,000–$130,000/year (USD), commensurate with experience and location and paid in USD. A defining role at the frontier of agentic and multi-scale AI, applied to global environmental challenges.

Unlimited paid time off, paid holidays, and paid sick leave. Remote work in a dynamic, international, mission-driven environment.