Research Lead & Academic Project Manager – Democratic AI Research (STORE Research | Chris McCoy)

STORE Research Inc. is a Democratic AI research lab building the mathematical and systems foundations for AI and cloud infrastructure that scales democratically—without centralization. Our core framework (Hamilton’s Law / constitutional mathematics) connects classical Byzantine Fault Tolerance with constitutional design principles to create governance systems that become more stable and distributed as they grow. We are hiring a high-agency Research Lead / Academic Project Manager (or a strong researcher + project manager pair) to work directly with Founder & CEO Chris McCoy. You will own the academic and external-facing research agenda: turning our internal mathematics, systems work, and production deployments into peer-reviewed conference papers, journal articles, and high-visibility talks. This is not a pure coordination role. We need someone who can advance the research itself—especially at the intersection of distributed systems, AI governance, multi-agent systems, and institutional design—while also driving the process that gets the work into the right venues and onto the right stages. What you will own Lead the formalization and publication pipeline for our core results (Hamilton’s Law / Lamport Equivalence, BlockFinBFT extensions, democratic AI governance mechanisms). Identify target venues (ACM PODC, IEEE ICDCS/SRDS/DSN, relevant AI governance and institutional-economics outlets, etc.) and drive submissions from draft through camera-ready. Co-author or lead papers; strengthen theorems, models, experiments, and related-work sections. Prepare and deliver (or support McCoy in delivering) conference talks, invited speeches, and workshop presentations. Speak on behalf of McCoy and STORE Research when appropriate. Manage the end-to-end research project: timelines, collaborators, external reviewers, open-sourcing of artifacts, and independent replication efforts. Help expand the research agenda inside Democratic AI—new formal results, empirical studies on our live governance systems, and bridges to polycentric governance / constitutional economics literature. Coordinate with McCoy closely while operating with high autonomy. Ideal profile Must-have Strong research background in at least one of: distributed systems / consensus / BFT, multi-agent AI systems, AI governance, or institutional/constitutional economics. Demonstrated ability to take technical or interdisciplinary ideas to peer-reviewed publication (conference or journal). Excellent project management skills—able to run a publication and speaking pipeline without constant oversight. Clear, precise written and spoken English; comfortable representing a founder and research lab externally. Self-directed, high ownership, comfortable with ambiguity and ambitious goals. Strongly preferred PhD (or equivalent research experience) in Computer Science, related technical field, or a quantitative social science. Prior publications in top distributed-systems, security, or AI venues. Experience bridging technical systems work with governance, economics, or political-economy questions. Familiarity with Byzantine Fault Tolerance, network effects, polycentric governance, or platform regulation literature is a plus. Experience preparing conference talks or speaking on research stages. Engagement details Remote, flexible hours (overlap with Pacific Time preferred). Initial 3-month engagement with strong possibility of longer-term / full-time relationship. Competitive hourly or monthly rate commensurate with experience (open to discussion for the right person or team). You will work directly with Chris McCoy and the STORE Research team. How to apply Please submit: Your CV / research profile (Google Scholar, DBLP, or equivalent). 2–3 relevant papers or writing samples (ideally ones you led or heavily contributed to). A short note (max 400 words) on why this problem space interests you and how you would approach getting our core results into strong peer-reviewed venues within the next 12 months. Your expected rate and availability. We move quickly with strong candidates. If you are excited by the chance to help turn a working Democratic AI research program into a recognized body of formal work, we want to hear from you.