Research Scientist – Optimization

Percepta’s mission is to transform critical institutions with applied AI. We care that industries that power the world (e.g. healthcare, manufacturing, energy) benefit from frontier technology.

To make that happen, we embed with industry-leading customers to drive AI transformation. We bring together:

• Forward-deployed expertise in engineering, product, and research

• Mosaic, our in-house toolkit for rapidly deploying agentic workflows

• Strategic partnerships with Anthropic, McKinsey, AWS, companies within the General Catalyst portfolio, and more

Our team is a quickly growing group of Applied AI Engineers, Embedded Product Managers and Researchers motivated by diffusing the promise of AI into improvements we can feel in our day to day lives.

Percepta is a direct partnership with General Catalyst, a global transformation and investment company.

As a Research Scientist - Optimization at Percepta, you'll work at the intersection of AI research and real-world impact. Once a world model has compressed the operation and forecasters and user models have scored what happens next, someone has to actually choose the best action, under real constraints, at production scale. That's this role: combining modern machine learning with rigorous optimization research — test-time search, reinforcement learning, and classical OR — to close the loop from prediction to decision.

Our optimizers are already running in production, allocating scarce resources against real operational constraints and generating measurable multi-million dollar impact. We've also built internal benchmarks with real, undisputed ground truth — replayable operations where a decision system's performance can be scored — to rigorously validate new methods before they ever touch a live customer.

• Set and drive ambitious research programs that expand what's achievable in data-driven decision-making, building on the forecasts and user models produced by our research tracks.

• Invent new optimization methods for high-impact problems such as planning, scheduling, routing, pricing, and inventory — combining test-time search and reinforcement learning with classical LP/MIP/CP formulations.

• Build high-fidelity simulators and rigorous, replayable benchmarks (in the spirit of the subway challenge) that mirror real-world constraints, uncertainty, and multi-objective trade-offs, and that let us validate a decision before it touches a real patient, member, or asset.

• Push optimizers from benchmark wins into production systems that hold up against real operational stakes — not just a demo, but something that runs fast in real-time and re-learns from outcomes every week.

• Bridge research into practice by partnering with our engineers to rapidly prototype solutions and implement successful research ideas across live customer engagements.

• PhD in Computer Science, Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, or Applied Mathematics or have equivalent research/industry experience.

• Have depth in operations or mathematical optimization (LP/MIP/MINLP, CP, stochastic/robust optimization).

• Have experience in novel machine learning techniques for Operations Research, including test-time search and reinforcement learning for sequential decision-making.

• Are comfortable implementing fast real-time optimization systems, debugging large-scale optimization systems, and/or designing benchmarks with real, defensible ground truth.

• Are motivated by impact in critical industries including healthcare, supply chains, energy, and finance.

• Have a proven track record of execution.

• Are an excellent communicator with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• Enjoy extreme ownership.

• Are passionate about AI's transformative potential.

As an organization, Percepta is committed to inclusion and belonging, and our people are our greatest investment! We’re working against an incredibly ambitious mission. It won’t be easy, but it will likely be the most fulfilling work of your career.

In addition to competitive compensation, equity, 401(k) matching, comprehensive health and family benefits, and lunch every day, we offer a culture built on autonomy and trust. We strongly believe that the boldest solutions come from teams who dream bigger together, and that means bringing in people from every kind of background, experience, and path. We are an office-first team that values the impact of in-person collaboration, but we focus on outcomes over outputs—believing that we are each responsible for solving the "whole problem" to make our customers win.

If you don't check every box on this description but you care deeply about the problems we're tackling, seeking the truth, and wanting to own outcomes alongside a team that has your back, then we want to hear from you! We know self-doubt keeps great people from applying, so please don't count yourself out before we've had the chance to meet you. Tackling the hardest problems takes a range of perspectives in the room, and we believe that's how we build something truly game-changing.

Our company values are more than just words on a page. They inform how our team shows up every day:

Dream bigger: We have the unique privilege of taking on the most ambitious problems and we should chase them with optimism, responsibility, and genuine belief that we can make it happen. We have to embrace the hard things when no one else will.
Heart in the game: What we're doing matters and we have to give a shit. Internally, that means fixing badness when you find it. Externally, it means honoring the trust our customers place in us with their most important problems. This isn’t a 9-5, nor is it a job we’re ever going to monitor your hours. We promise to put work in front of you that matters and in return, we ask you to promise to care.
Win for the customer: Everyone is an engineer and the job of an engineer is to deliver outcomes, not outputs. Everything we do—the products we build, the partnerships we launch, the strategy we set—exists to make our customers successful. Delivery is the strategy.
Make the call: Organizations are only as strong as the pace at which they make decisions. Everyone at Percepta should feel empowered to commit and shape the ambiguity in front of them. But "make the call" cuts both ways: make the decision and make the phone call. High-agency decision-making only works with high-bandwidth communication and we commit to never operate in silos.
Intensity with kindness: We believe in excellence in execution, candor in feedback, ruthlessness in prioritization, and survivalist urgency. We also believe you don't need to be an asshole to deliver on any of this. The trust built through shared kindness and vulnerability is what makes the intensity sustainable.

Percepta is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and we evaluate every qualified applicant on their merits and give equal consideration for employment regardless of race, color, creed, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, veteran or uniformed service status, age, or any other characteristic protected under applicable law. Percepta provides reasonable accommodations to qualified applicants and employees in accordance with federal and applicable state law.