AI Research Resident

The posting, as Normal Computing Corporation wrote it

NORMAL COMPUTING | BUILD WITH US

Normal is an applied AI company solving the hardest problems in AI and silicon. We build foundational hardware and software for the semiconductor industry, critical AI infrastructure, and the broader systems that power our world, in partnership with the world's most advanced institutions. We work as one team across New York City, Silicon Valley (Mountain View), and London.

THE RESIDENCY PROGRAM

The AI Research Residency is Normal Computing's flagship program for exceptional researchers and engineers who want to work at the frontier of AI. Residents join a small, hand-picked cohort with a dedicated research mentor, direct access to the teams building our in-memory inference hardware and the AI systems that design and verify it, and a clear arc from onboarding through publication.

Every residency is built around two milestones that mark you as part of something bigger than a single project: a research paper co-authored with our team, and a company-wide research colloquium where you present your findings to the full Normal Computing organization. You'll leave with a body of published, presented work, and a standing as one of the earliest residents to help define what this program becomes.

THIS TRACK: AUTORESEARCH

Normal's hardware runs the most memory-bound parts of large-model inference inside memory itself, rather than shuttling weights to a processor. Building silicon like that quickly needs AI in the loop: agentic systems that explore the design space, generate and verify candidate designs, and learn from every experiment, in simulation, in the lab and on deployed silicon. This track is about that loop. You will use AI to make our hardware and the tools that design it better, and use what better hardware teaches us to make the AI better in turn, a closed loop where each side accelerates the other.

You'll treat recursive self-improvement as an empirical engineering problem: build the strategies, measure whether each improvement actually compounds, and feed the result back into the next generation of chip.

YOUR NORMAL EXPERIENCE

This is a deliberately cross-functional residency, one of the few seats at Normal with a foot in both worlds. On one side is our thermodynamic hardware: silicon that exploits noise and analog dynamics rather than fighting them. On the other is our autoresearch platform: agentic systems that learn from design data to design and verify that silicon. You'll work across both, looking for the places where an improvement to one compounds into an improvement to the other, and turn research into production-quality research code that a team can build on.

You'll get direct exposure to the pace, ambiguity, and speed of decision-making that comes with working at a fast-moving, well-funded hardware startup, where the distance between an idea on a whiteboard and a test on real silicon is measured in weeks, not years.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Develop recursive self-improvement strategies. De

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re to hardware-side tooling (SPICE, FPGA or ASIC flows, or EDA software) or a strong eagerness to pick it up.

• Familiarity with agentic systems, reinforcement learning, or automated design and optimization loops: the kinds of methods that let one system meaningfully improve another.
• Systems-level thinking: you can reason about second-order effects, where an improvement in one layer (say, a design tool) changes what's possible in another (say, chip performance, or model quality).
• A rigorous, evidence-first mindset about self-improvement. You're drawn to this problem because it's a hard empirical and engineering challenge, and you care about measuring real gains rather than assuming them.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; prior experience writing up research (papers, theses, technical reports) is a plus, as is any experience presenting technical work to a live audience.
• A bias toward ownership and self-direction. You're energized, not overwhelmed, by the ambiguity and speed of a small, fast-moving startup.

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

Normal Computing is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected status.

Accessibility Accommodations

Normal Computing is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please let us know at accommodations@normalcomputing.com.

Privacy Notice

By submitting your application, you agree that Normal Computing may collect, use, and store your personal information for employment-related purposes in accordance with our Applicant Privacy Notice https://normalcomputing.com/applicant-privacy-notice.