Base Labs Fellowship

The Base Labs Fellowship is designed to give researchers exposure to what frontier research looks like in industry. We provide funding, mentorship, and full support to our fellows, with the goal of producing rigorous, published research that shapes both the open-source ecosystem and Baseten's technical roadmap.

We run multiple cohorts of Fellows each year and review applications on a rolling basis. This application is for cohorts starting in Sept 2026 and beyond.

WHAT TO EXPECT

• 3 months of full-time research from our San Francisco office

• A dedicated 1:1 mentorship from a senior researcher

• $15,000 Stipend (per 3-months)

• Funding for compute and other research expenses

• Opportunities to publish and present at top venues, including ICML, NeurIPS, and Grace Hopper

• A clear path to a full-time offer for the strongest performers

Each fellow is matched 1:1 with one of three senior researchers.

Potential mentors include:

• Michael Psenka

• Max Kirkby

• Charles O’Neill

Note: You're welcome to research mentors' prior work, but all applications must go through the official process below, not the mentors directly.

A quick note on our view on talent.

Many of the labs that exist today run a credentialist talent model. Concentrate the most already-legible researchers, and assume the concentration compounds. The best researchers in this field are very often not yet legible. Research engineers who have spent years inside a production stack and developed insights no PhD program teaches; PhDs working on the wrong-shaped problem at the right-shaped lab; operators who have been close to real systems long enough to see things traditional researchers have never had to see. If you don’t have the usual qualifications and are doing exceptional work, we’d love to chat.

For the sake of providing some directional criteria for potential fits for this fellowship:

• Are enrolled in or have recently completed a PhD in ML, AI, statistics, or a closely related field

• Have a publication record or research portfolio that demonstrates original, rigorous thinking

• Care about what your work is in service of - not just the problem, but why it matters

• Want to operate with autonomy and don't need a defined roadmap to do your best work

• Are excited to be in San Francisco for the duration of the program, fully embedded in the team

• Are drawn to the idea of building a research culture, not just participating in one

• 1:1 by design. Three fellows, three mentors. You will not get lost.

• Real stakes. Your research feeds directly into decisions about what Baseten builds and what workloads it pursues. The line from your work to the product is short.

• A founding moment. We are building Base Labs from scratch. The first cohort shapes what it becomes the culture, the research agenda, the brand.

• Full support. Housing, meals, travel, and compute are all handled. We remove every barrier between you and the work.

• A clear path forward. Top performers are considered for a full-time role.

NOTE: The benefits listed below are only applicable to full-time hires.