Hiring nowFormal methods and reliable reasoning

Automated Theorem Proving Researcher

Also called AI Theorem-Proving Scientist

An Automated Theorem Proving Researcher builds and improves methods that find or check mathematical and logical proofs by machine. The company gets results it can trust, because every claim comes with a proof a checker has accepted.

What they do

The work centres on proof search. They design methods that guide a prover, whether symbolic, learned or a mix, towards proofs of hard statements. They choose how problems are represented in logic, and how a model's suggestions are turned into steps a proof assistant will accept. They build benchmarks from problems the system has never seen. They read failed proofs to find out why search stalled. They use SMT solvers and model checkers where those fit better than interactive proving. They write up results so others can rerun them.

What a strong hire delivers

In the first months, a strong hire delivers a working proof search method with a clear baseline to beat. They set up an evaluation on held-out problems that the team trusts. They produce machine-checkable proofs that others can inspect and reuse. They also explain where the method fails, so the company can decide where to invest next and where not to.

How you can tell they are good

Ask them to walk through a proof search method they built and what they measured. Strong people separate what the search found from what the checker accepted. They describe how they kept test problems unseen, and they can show a failure and explain it. Be wary of anyone who quotes headline results without saying how the evaluation was built.

Why it is hard to fill

Titles vary widely, so searching by title misses most of them. The skill sits between logic, formal verification and machine learning, and few people are strong in all three. Many are academics with deep proving experience but little production exposure. Others are machine learning engineers who have never used a proof assistant. Candidates who have genuinely done both are rare, and they are usually well placed already.

Where to find them

Look in formal methods and verification groups, logic and programming language research, and mathematics departments with a formal proof interest. Titles include research scientist, verification engineer, formal methods researcher and postdoctoral researcher. Frontier labs, hardware and software verification teams, and small companies building reasoning systems all employ people doing this work. Open source proof assistant communities are also worth watching.

Indicative pay

Not enough published evidence yet to give a fair range for this role, which is common for work this new. We benchmark it for you as part of a search.

Interview questions for an Automated Theorem Proving Researcher

  1. Describe a proof search method you built. What did it do better than the baseline, and how did you know?

    A strong answer names the baseline, the metric and the held-out set. It shows honest comparison and some failed ideas. Worry if the answer rests on anecdotes, tuned test sets or unclear gains.

  2. How do you keep an evaluation on held-out problems genuinely held out?

    Good answers cover separating problems by source and by statement, checking for near duplicates, and limiting repeated tuning against the test set. Worry if they have not considered leakage from training data.

4 more questions, with what a strong answer covers, are in the Role Kit.

Job description you can post

We are building systems that reason, and we want their results to be checkable. We are looking for an Automated Theorem Proving Researcher to improve how our systems find and verify proofs. You will work with researchers and engineers, and your results will be proofs a machine has checked.

What you will do

  • Design and test proof search methods, symbolic, learned or combined
  • Build evaluations on held-out problems and report results honestly
  • Connect model outputs to proof assistants so steps are machine-checked
  • Choose and refine logical representations for new problem areas
  • Analyse failed proof attempts and act on what they show
  • Document methods and results so others can reproduce them

What you will bring

  • Demonstrated work in theorem proving, formal methods, logic or verification
  • Hands-on experience with at least one proof assistant
  • Experience with SMT solvers or model checkers
  • Comfort with linear algebra and optimisation for learned methods
  • Evidence of careful model evaluation, such as benchmarks you built
  • Clear written explanations of technical results

Nice to have

  • Experience combining language models with proof search
  • Contributions to open source proof libraries or tools
  • Background in decision theory or game theory

Free to use and adapt. If it saves you time, a link back to this page is appreciated.

Skills that matter

  • Formal verificationAdvancedProve stated properties under explicit assumptions
  • Linear algebra and optimisationAdvancedReason about matrix operations and objective functions
  • Model evaluationWorkingMeasure capability and failure modes credibly
  • Decision theory and game theoryWorkingAnalyse choices, incentives and strategic interactions

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How we wrote this

Role definitions are our own editorial work, checked against occupational classifications, standards, research and employer pages. Titles vary by company, and this is a description of the work, not a job advert.

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