Applications closed

Syntony Engineering Fellowship

Syntony · Remote · Durham, NC · Formation-stage startup

Applications are now closed. Applications for the Spring 2027 fellowship will open in December 2026. The part-time program is for engineers and researchers who want to own a defined technical project.

About Syntony

Syntony evaluates frontier and production AI systems and helps clients govern the risks those evaluations uncover. We build software to make testing reproducible and to carry findings through review into control and retesting workflows. Our clients include frontier labs, public-sector organizations, and companies deploying AI.

Syntony is founder-led and pre-seed. Fellows will work with early technical systems and see how research questions become product decisions and scoped engineering work.

Fellowship structure

The Syntony Engineering Fellowship is a selective, part-time program built around prototype and research-engineering projects in AI evaluation and governance.

Fellows work directly with Nathan Heath, Syntony's Founder & CEO. Each project starts with a defined technical question and bounded scope. It ends with an artifact the fellow can point to when the work is complete.

The format requires independent work between regular working sessions. It can suit students, recent graduates, independent builders, researchers, or experienced engineers who have relevant work to show.

Evidence of technical judgment

We look for work that shows how you frame a problem, make technical choices, test the result, and explain what you learned.

A defined project

Projects are scoped so one fellow can own a meaningful piece of work and finish with a usable technical artifact.

Direct founder collaboration

You will set the question with Syntony's founder and review technical choices as the project develops. Scope is managed together.

Work you can discuss

Projects are structured around an artifact the fellow can discuss publicly when confidentiality and intellectual-property terms allow.

Project areas

Where fellows may build

Evaluation infrastructure

Build test harnesses and trace or logging tools that let another evaluator reproduce an adversarial run.

Agentic systems and tool use

Develop tests for planning, tool use, memory, delegation, and other behavior across multi-step environments.

Risk data and index engineering

Build pipelines that collect incident data and score it against a usable taxonomy. The resulting system should surface emerging risk signals.

GovTune AI prototypes

Prototype ways to turn red-team traces into draft findings and materials for governance review.

Causal modeling and system dynamics

Build tools that map feedback loops and escalation paths across a technical system and its organizational or policy environment.

Research engineering

Turn a research question into a working prototype that another person can test and improve.

Strong candidates will have

  • Strong programming ability, especially in Python or TypeScript.
  • Evidence of independent building, such as a GitHub project, research code, a product or demo, technical writing, or substantial course or research work.
  • Clear written communication and the ability to explain technical choices.
  • Interest in at least one relevant area, including AI safety, evaluation, governance, red teaming, systems thinking, or strategic risk.
  • Sound judgment when requirements are incomplete and when work is confidential.
  • Comfort investigating a problem that does not yet have an established solution.

Bonus

  • Experience with LLM evaluation frameworks, agent scaffolds, data pipelines, or developer tools.
  • Prior work in AI safety, ML security, policy, forecasting, or governance.
  • Open-source contributions, research publications, working demonstrations, or technical essays.
  • Comfort reading papers and turning ideas into working prototypes.
  • Experience reducing a complex idea to a system other people can use.
Structure & pathway

How the fellowship works

Part-time and project-scoped

The written project scope covers the time commitment, duration, attribution, confidentiality, intellectual property, and expected deliverable.

Not a full-time role

The fellowship is a part-time project arrangement, not a full-time employment role. It does not guarantee future employment.

Future work is scoped separately

Any later engineering, contract, founding-team, or longer-term opportunity would have its own scope and terms.

Separate scope for client work

Client-facing work is outside the default fellowship scope. Substantial commercial product work or client delivery requires a separate written agreement.

How we evaluate

We start with demonstrated work. We also assess technical judgment and how clearly you explain decisions.

  1. Application review.
  2. Short async conversation.
  3. Technical conversation with Nathan.
  4. Small scoped project discussion or work sample.
  5. Fellowship invitation and written project scope.
Applications closed

Spring 2027 applications open in December 2026

The current application cycle has closed. Application instructions for the Spring 2027 fellowship will be posted here when the next cycle opens.

No applications are being accepted at this time

Please return in December 2026 for the Spring 2027 application details.

Syntony is committed to building a diverse team. We evaluate candidates on demonstrated ability and judgment, not credentials or pedigree. When applications are open, we strongly encourage candidates whose backgrounds may not perfectly match the description to apply. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability. We may use AI tools to assist with parts of the application review process. Final decisions are made by humans.