A prominent advisor can attract attention to a lab. Candidates still need to know what work is open and how the roles differ. Sakana AI's current careers page gives that second part.
On September 24, Sakana AI announced that Jürgen Schmidhuber had joined as Chief Scientific Advisor, alongside his existing positions. The company says he will help guide its Recursive Self-Improvement Lab and travel to Tokyo regularly.
The Sakana careers page, observed September 27, listed 25 openings. Three current roles carry the RSI Lab name: Member of Technical Staff, Program Manager, and Public Sector Specialist. The board does not say the advisor appointment created them.
The Member of Technical Staff role is based in Tokyo and accepts applications for full-time, visiting researcher, and internship tracks. English is the listed working language. The Program Manager role is a full-time Tokyo position covering budgets, schedules, external communications, and hiring and onboarding processes for the research team. It requires business-level Japanese and English. The Public Sector Specialist role is also full-time in Tokyo and lists business Japanese. None of the three pages publishes a salary range.
For candidates, the important choice is whether you want to conduct research, run the systems that let researchers work, or translate research into public-sector planning. Ask how each role is measured, who sets the lab's research agenda, and what publication expectations apply. For founders building a new lab, an advisor announcement does not replace a role design. Sakana's three openings are useful because they separate technical research, program operations, and external coordination.
