VP of Research, Machine Learning

Set and evolve research direction for A1's core intelligence, including context representation, memory, reasoning, planning, and orchestration. Decide when to design new model architectures versus adapting frontier open-source or commercial models. Define evaluation frameworks measuring real-world usefulness, robustness, safety, and long-term behavior rather than benchmark vanity. Own alignment, safety, and guardrail strategy as first-class product concerns while guiding exploration of techniques like retrieval-augmented training, mixture-of-experts, and multi-agent orchestration. Shape early product intelligence direction in close partnership with product and application engineering to set the technical bar for research rigor across the organization.