{"id":653388,"url":"https://alion.io/job/afterquery-research-scientist-post-training","title":"Research Scientist - Post Training","company":{"id":668886,"name":"AfterQuery","domain":"afterquery.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/afterquery","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":86,"open_postings":11,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.545,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-11-05T05:54:30Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":210000,"max":450000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":450000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Anthropic","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"OpenAI","optional":false},{"name":"Post-training","optional":false},{"name":"SFT","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-04-14T00:08:32Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-04-14","last_verified_at":"2026-11-05T12:28:29Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":205,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":205},"description":"About AfterQuery\nAfterQuery is an applied research lab curating data solutions for foundation model development. We serve every frontier AI lab with the mission of delivering the best data to power the best models. In doing so, we can make expertise that once took a lifetime to build available to anyone who needs it.\nOur customers are the ones building the foundation models themselves and our work sits directly in the loop of how those systems improve. This is a rare opportunity to join a company at a defining moment in AI. Forbes reported that we could be YC's fastest unicorn, reportedly raising at a $3.2 billion valuation. We're based in San Francisco and backed by leading investors including Altos Ventures, BoxGroup, and Y Combinator and angels from Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta Superintelligence Labs, and Microsoft AI.\nWhy Apply\nMassive Opportunity: Forbes reported that we could be YC's fastest unicorn, reportedly raising at a $3.2 billion valuation, and we're not slowing down.\nFounding Impact: You will own and architect core infrastructure systems that power our platform from the ground up.\nEquity & Growth: Competitive salary and meaningful equity. As we scale, you’ll have the opportunity to shape the engineering organization and lead major technical initiatives.\nStrong Team: Our founding team has experience from Citadel Securities, Meta, Google, Silver Lake, and Morgan Stanley - work alongside world-class engineers and researchers.\nOverview\nYour job is to prove that our data works. You will design and run training experiments that isolate the impact of our datasets on model behavior. This includes SFT and RL-based post-training, where you’ll measure how different data sources shift capability, generalization, and alignment. Working closely with partner labs, you will turn our datasets into clear, defensible evidence: this data → this improvement → under these conditions. This is experimental, high-leverage work.\nResponsibilities\nRun controlled SFT and RL experiments to measure the impact of our datasets on model performance.\n\nHelp build public evals and new data types that push the frontier.\n\nPublish external-facing research, blog posts, and technical reports.\n\nWork with internal SPLs to iterate on data quality based on your results.\n\nRequired Qualifications\nStrong familiarity with LLM training and evaluation methodologies.\n\nAbility to design lightweight experiments, move fast, and extract actionable insights from messy results.\n\nComfort working across domains (you'll touch finance, software engineering, policy, and more).\n\nA bias toward building over theorizing.\n\nPreferred Qualifications\nGreat candidates are undergrad research or master's research (but haven't done a phd).\n\nGenuine obsession with how data structure, selection, and quality drive model behavior.\n\nCompany Benefits (For Eligible Employees):\nHealth Insurance: Medical, Vision, Dental\n\n401(k) with Employer Match\n\nDaily Meals: Daily UberEats Stipend\n\nMonthly Wellness Stipend\n\nWe are an equal opportunity employer committed to providing a workplace free from discrimination and harassment. Employment decisions are made without regard to legally protected characteristics under applicable federal, state, or local law.\nWe comply with applicable pay transparency requirements and provide compensation ranges based on the position, qualifications, experience, and other relevant factors. Reasonable accommodations are available to qualified individuals with disabilities and for sincerely held religious beliefs, as required by law. This job description is intended to describe the general nature and level of work performed and is not an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, qualifications, or working conditions associated with the position. We reserve the right to modify this job description as business needs change.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3861,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"master","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Health insurance"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Artificial Intelligence","LLM & Generative AI","Foundation Models"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-10T20:42:06Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":3,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.099,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":205,"expected_fill_days":28,"reasons":["conf:3","stale_co","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-11-05T05:54:30Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":450000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/afterquery-research-scientist-post-training","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/afterquery-research-scientist-post-training.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-05T17:39:53Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":22983,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-06T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":668886},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=668886"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fafterquery-research-scientist-post-training"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fafterquery-research-scientist-post-training"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fafterquery-research-scientist-post-training"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/afterquery-research-scientist-post-training\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fafterquery-research-scientist-post-training"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":653388}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"afterquery.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":653388},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. Docs: https://alion.io/developers"}}