Research Engineer — Compilers & Programming Languages

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About Basis

Basis is a nonprofit applied AI research organization with two mutually reinforcing goals.

The first is to understand and build intelligence. This entails establishing the mathematical principles of reasoning, learning, decision-making, understanding, and explaining, and constructing software that embodies these principles.

The second is to advance society’s ability to solve intractable problems. This involves expanding the scale, complexity, and breadth of problems we can solve today and, more importantly, accelerating our ability to solve problems in the future.

To achieve these goals, we are building both a new technological foundation inspired by human reasoning, and a new type of collaborative organization that prioritizes human value.

About the Role

Research engineers support Basis’ mission by translating research ideas into correct, robust, and scalable high-quality code.

We seek individuals who excel technically and value probing concepts at their foundations. Our research engineers aspire to conduct rigorous, high-quality, robust science, unafraid to tinker, make mistakes, and explore radically different ideas to achieve this.

Basis is a collaborative endeavor, both internally and with our external partners; we seek individuals who relish working with others on challenges larger than those they can tackle alone.

Compilers & Programming Languages Research Engineers

This role targets experts in programming languages design, implementation, and analysis. The core areas of PL research engineering include:

Compiler design and optimization
Partial evaluation and program transformation
Program analysis and abstract interpretation
Domain-specific language implementation
Runtime systems and garbage collection

These areas are honed within the context of building reasoning systems. Consequently, research engineers will also engage with topics such as probabilistic programming, automatic differentiation, and SAT/SMT solvers, among others.

We expect you to:

Possess excellent programming and software engineering skills, especially in Julia, C++, or ML-family languages (OCaml, Haskell).
Have demonstrated the ability to drive software projects from start to finish. This could be evidenced by open-source projects, technical reports, and publications.
Be comfortable digesting research from PL venues, such as PLDI, POPL, OOPSLA, or ICFP.
Progress with a high degree of autonomy and under uncertainty.
Be enthusiastic about solving real-world problems and making a positive societal impact.
Have demonstrated significant technical achievements within PL engineering. Examples include:
- You’ve designed the full stack of a novel programming language, all the way from a formalized semantics to an optimized compiler.
- You’ve contributed heavily to the compiler infrastructure of a machine learning or statistics framework, such as PyTorch, Stan, or Jax.
- You’ve built a program analysis technique that has helped identify bugs or inefficiencies in a real code base.

In addition, the following would be an advantage:

A PhD (or equivalent experience) in technical areas including: programming languages, computer science, logic, mathematics.

Responsibilities:

Translate research ideas into correct, robust, and scalable high-quality code.
Engage in programming language design/implementation.
Performance engineering, scaling research code.
Algorithm development.
Contribute to the culture and direction of Basis.
(Optionally) Publish and present findings in journals and conferences.

Role Details

Exceptional candidates who may not meet all of the following criteria are still encouraged to apply.

FT/PT: This is a full-time position
In-person Policy: We are in the office four days a week. Be prepared to attend multi-day Basis-wide in-person events.
Location: This role is in-person in either New York City or Cambridge, MA.
Salary range: Competitive salary

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