About the job
At Thinking Machines Lab, our mission is to empower humanity by advancing collaborative general intelligence. We strive to build a future where everyone has access to the knowledge and tools essential for making AI work effectively for their unique objectives.
Our team comprises scientists, engineers, and innovators who have contributed to some of the most widely adopted AI products, including ChatGPT and Character.ai, as well as notable open-weight models like Mistral and popular open-source projects such as PyTorch, OpenAI Gym, Fairseq, and Segment Anything.
About the Role
The Post-Training Researcher position is pivotal to our roadmap. It serves as a crucial connection between raw model intelligence and a system that is genuinely beneficial, safe, and collaborative for human users.
This role uniquely combines fundamental research with practical engineering, as we do not differentiate between these functions internally. Candidates will be expected to produce high-performance code and analyze technical reports. This position is ideal for individuals who relish both deep theoretical inquiry and hands-on experimentation, aiming to influence the foundational aspects of AI learning.
Note: This position is classified as an 'evergreen role', meaning we continuously accept applications in this research domain. Given the high volume of applications, an immediate match for your skills and experience may not always be available. However, we encourage you to apply; we regularly review submissions and reach out as new opportunities arise. You are welcome to apply again after gaining more experience, but we ask that you refrain from applying more than once every six months. Additionally, specific postings for singular roles may be available for distinct projects or team needs, in which case you are welcome to apply directly in conjunction with this evergreen role.
What You’ll Do
- Develop and Optimize Recipes: Refine post-training recipes, encompassing various datasets, training stages, and hyperparameters, while assessing their impact on multiple performance metrics.
- Iterate on Evaluations: Engage in a continuous process of defining evaluation metrics, optimizing them, and recognizing their limitations. You will be accountable for enhancing performance metrics and ensuring they are meaningful.
- Debug and Analyze: During the fine-tuning of training configurations, you may encounter results that appear inconsistent. You will be responsible for troubleshooting and cultivating a deeper understanding to apply to subsequent challenges.
- Scale and Investigate: Assess and expand the capabilities of our models while exploring potential improvements.

