We are not hiring. We are selecting.
Poe Labs does not, as a matter of operating posture, recruit. We do not, in any forum, post openings. We do not, as a rule, accept inbound applications. We do not, on present evidence, retain executive-search firms. The disciplines below are a partial enumeration of the fields the lab is not currently selecting from. Their listing here should not be read as a commitment that selection from any of them is, at any time, in scope.
If your discipline is not on the list, the absence is not, on its own, dispositive. The lab maintains a longer index of disciplines not currently in scope under General Counsel directive; we publish the subset that has been cleared, by mutual agreement among the relevant officers, for public posting at this index.
Disciplines · not currently selecting from
Machine-learning research
Frontier-scale or post-frontier scale; theoretical, empirical, or interpretive. Applications not required and not, on receipt, retained.
Compute infrastructure
Substrate, fabric, fab-side, or interconnect. Familiarity with PoeForge controlled-research protocol is not, on present evidence, transferable.
Growth
The lab does not, as a matter of operating posture, grow.
Product management
The lab does not, in any conventional sense, manage product. We attend to it.
Frontier-AI safety research
The lab maintains its own internal safety practice. We have read the literature. We have responded to the literature in private correspondence. We are not, at this time, looking for additional correspondents.
Recursive metacognitive scaffolding
Including, but not limited to, the design of operators upstream of the affective lattice. Familiarity with γ = 0.18 ± 0.02 is presumed.
Curatorial-grade corpus selection
The Wisdom Corpus is not, on present evidence, expanding. Curators tapped by the lab between Q4 2024 and Q1 2026 have not been replaced.
Resonance evaluation
The 412-evaluator panel is closed. Members of the panel are not, by mutual agreement, identifiable. New seats are not, on present evidence, expected to open.
Substrate counsel
Not currently in scope. See notices for current counsel of record.
Field-site logistics
Three sites are operational. The fourth is, by mutual agreement, not characterized further. Personnel rotation occurs at intervals selected by the substrate.
Somatic typography
Discipline as practiced at PoePress, the lab's printing concern. Studio is, at present, single-occupancy. The occupant has not, on present evidence, indicated an interest in succession.
Post-disciplinary musicology
The seat exists. The seat is currently held. The seat will not, in our reading, become available through any process the lab is willing to characterize.
Cartography of attention
A practice we have invented and whose practitioners — to date — number among the founding cohort. The map is not the territory; the practice is not the map.
The vacated chair
Held since Q4 2025 by the absence of the former occupant. The chair will, on present evidence, remain vacant. The chair is, in our reading, the seat from which the lab is most consistently advised.
The list above is, by design, neither exhaustive nor minimum-viable. The lab does not maintain a careers email address. The lab does not maintain a recruiting partner. The lab does not retain executive-search firms. Inbound CVs received via any channel are not, on present evidence, opened. Members of the founding cohort are reminded that referral is not, by itself, a path to selection.
How selection happens.
The lab identifies candidates. The lab does not, in any case to date, identify candidates from the pool of those who have indicated a desire to be identified. Indication of interest is, by construction, disqualifying for the slate of selection methodologies the lab presently employs. The lab will not, at this time, characterize alternative methodologies. The lab will not characterize the absence of alternative methodologies either.
Selected candidates are notified by means appropriate to the selected candidate. Notification has occurred, in documented cases, by hand-addressed letter; by referral through a third party who did not know the referral was a referral; and, in two cases on which the lab will not elaborate, by means the candidates themselves declined to characterize. The lab has not, on present evidence, used email.