About the job
Maincode is building sovereign AI models in Australia. We train foundation models from scratch, design new reasoning architectures, and deploy them on state-of-the-art GPU clusters. This is not fine-tuning someone else’s work. This is creating new systems from first principles.
We’re hiring a research leader for our AI Residency program. Our AI Residency Program is a focused research collaboration with top academic talent: late-stage PhD students, postdocs, and professors, working on foundational AI research at the architectural level. Each cohort of residents joins us for 6-months to pursue ambitious projects that align with our mission, combining academic rigor with industry-scale infrastructure and execution. This is a full-time, permanent role with ongoing responsibility for sourcing and selecting residents, guiding them through their projects, supporting publication efforts, and ensuring impactful, aligned research outcomes.
The program is already up and running, now we’re looking for a research leader to own its day-to-day execution. You’ll make sure the right people are selected, the right projects are pursued, and the research produced is impactful, publishable, and aligned with Maincode’s long-term goals. You’ll also lead sourcing, interviewing, and hiring of residents, and ensure each one’s experience is productive and inspiring. This is a hybrid role based in Australia.
What you’ll do
Run the AI Residency Program end-to-end, ensuring smooth operations, clear timelines, and high-impact outcomes.
Source, recruit, and hire outstanding residents, managing the full candidate pipeline from outreach to signed offers.
Select and greenlight projects in consultation with Maincode’s research leadership to ensure strategic alignment.
Guide and mentor residents throughout their 6-month program, drawing on your academic and industry experience.
Maintain research quality, ensuring outputs meet top-tier publication standards and practical applicability.
Coordinate with internal research teams so residency work complements and extends Maincode’s own research agenda.
Represent the program externally, building relationships with universities, research groups, and other AI communities.
Who you are
A senior academic researcher (postdoc or above) with deep expertise in AI and a broad understanding of the field’s directions.
Experienced in supervising PhD-level research and managing multiple projects simultaneously.
Skilled in candidate sourcing, interviewing, and selection for high-level research roles.
Have a strong publication record in top AI/ML venues (NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, etc.).
Strong strategic judgment in choosing projects and people that balance novelty with long-term impact.
A confident communicator who can work seamlessly with both academic researchers and industry engineers.
Motivated to strengthen sovereign AI capability in Australia through academic–industry collaboration.
Why Maincode
We are a small, mission-driven team building some of the most advanced AI systems in Australia. We operate our own GPU clusters, run large-scale training, and work closely across research and engineering to push the frontier of what’s possible.
You’ll be surrounded by people who:
Care deeply about model internals, not just outputs.
Build things that work at scale.
Take pride in learning, experimenting, and shipping.
Believe Australia must have independent, world-class AI systems.
If you want to run a program that brings world-class researchers into an environment where they can test ideas at scale and make a lasting impact on the science of AI, we’d love to hear from you.
