Contra Labs
Research Scientist, Human Data & Evaluation
$150K–$200K
New York City (Onsite) · On-site · Full-time · Posted Aug 17, 2026
- Experience
- 3–5+ years of relevant research experience.
- Education
- Master’s, PhD, or equivalent industry research depth in HCI, Human-Centered AI, ML, design research, or a related field.
About the job
Independently designs and leads human-centered AI research and evaluation projects, from research questions and methodology through analysis, recommendations, and client-ready deliverables.
What you'll do
- Develop research directions, proposals, study designs, human-data strategies, evaluation protocols, and experiments.
- Analyze qualitative and quantitative data, explain findings, and produce recommendations, reports, presentations, benchmarks, and publications.
- Own research engagements end to end and collaborate with project, creative, research engineering, and data teams.
What they ask for
- Strong qualitative and quantitative research skills, including experience in human evaluation, experimentation, data collection, UX/HCI, annotation, or model behavior research.
- Ability to independently design and execute rigorous research and turn findings into insights and recommendations.
- Comfort analyzing data with Python and/or SQL.
- Based in NYC, USA, and able to work in-office five days per week in Williamsburg.
Nice to have
- Familiarity with modern ML and generative AI systems, RLHF, post-training, preference data, or model evaluation.
- Experience with creative or multimodal systems, prompting, large-scale human-data programs, AI research teams, or original research.
Pay
USD 150,000 - 200,000 base salary
Tools
Python, SQL
AI focus
Research and evaluation for creative and multimodal AI, including human-data collection, benchmarking, post-training data, preference evaluation, and model behavior.
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