Forward Deployed Research Scientist

Job Description

Work directly with research teams at leading AI labs and act as a technical partner during client engagements Scope AI data projects and advise on data strategy, model training, and evaluation approaches Fine-tune open-source LLMs to validate data quality and measure performance impact Run experiments, ablation studies, and benchmarking exercises Review annotation schemas, quality frameworks, and human data collection methodologies Partner with operations teams to ensure data produced aligns with client training objectives Collaborate with Applied Research on publications, benchmarks, white papers, and conference submissions Manage multiple client projects simultaneously in a fast-paced, delivery-driven environment

Skills and Requirements

MS or PhD in Machine Learning, NLP, Computer Science, or related quantitative field Hands-on experience fine-tuning LLMs (Llama, Mistral, Qwen, or similar) Strong understanding of: Pretraining Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) RLHF DPO Experience designing and executing rigorous ML experiments Strong understanding of how data quality and data composition impact model performance Ability to quickly move from problem definition to experimentation and results Strong written and verbal communication skills Comfortable presenting findings to highly technical stakeholders and AI researchers Previous experience at an AI lab, AI startup, or applied ML company Experience with LLM evaluation and benchmarking Building evaluation frameworks and metrics Human data / annotation workflow experience Quality assurance and inter-annotator agreement experience Reinforcement Learning, Reward Modeling, or RLHF experience Published ML/NLP research Client-facing or stakeholder-facing research experience Experience contributing to white papers, benchmarks, or conference publications

We are a company committed to creating diverse and inclusive environments where people can bring their full, authentic selves to work every day. We are an equal employment opportunity/affirmative action employer that believes everyone matters. Qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, marital status, national origin, ancestry, genetic factors, age, disability, protected veteran status, military or uniformed service member status, or any other status or characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations, and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request to [email protected].