{"id":1570026,"url":"https://alion.io/job/thinking-machines-lab-model-behavior-model-designer","title":"Model Designer","company":{"id":14382,"name":"Thinking Machines Lab","domain":"thinkingmachines.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/thinking-machines-lab","size_band":"501-1000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":null},"role":"Design","role_family":"Design","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":300000,"max":400000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":400000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Multimodal AI","optional":false},{"name":"A/B Testing","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-30T23:24:32Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-30","last_verified_at":"2026-10-12T11:21:17Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":11,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":11},"description":"About Thinking Machines\nThe mission of Thinking Machines is to build AI that extends human will and judgment. We are training frontier models with Inkling, developing Tinker to let people make models their own, and crafting interfaces that broaden human-AI communication. We believe the future worth building is human, and we're hiring people who want to build it.\nAbout the Role\nAs a Model Designer, you'll shape how our models work alongside people. You'll hold several things in tension: pushing what our models can do, anticipating what someone is reaching for before they've fully said it, and keeping the person's judgment at the center of the work rather than quietly replacing it. We're looking for people who care deeply about design, technology, and the humans on the other side of the screen, and who want to help invent forms of human-AI collaboration that go well beyond typing into a box and waiting.\nWhat You’ll Do\nWork closely with researchers to understand, predict, and shape model behavior, knowing that lasting behavior lives in the weights, not just the prompt.\n\nDesign how our models collaborate: when to take initiative, when to invite oversight or feedback, and how to earn the trust to act on someone's behalf over time.\n\nBuild strong, thoughtful defaults that serve as a starting point people can reshape around their own knowledge and values, rather than a single voice imposed on everyone.\n\nPartner with research, product, and design teams on interfaces that widen the channel between people and models, including live and multimodal interaction.\n\nFind creative ways to collect high-quality data, especially the tacit, hard-to-articulate knowledge people build through doing real work.\n\nHelp define what good looks like, with evaluations that capture what people and models accomplish together, not only what a model can do alone.\n\nProactively identify improvements based on product sense, user feedback, quantitative insight, and the research roadmap.\n\nManage multiple projects on tight timelines, and do whatever it takes to make our models better collaborators.\n\nSkills and Qualifications\nMinimum qualifications:\nClarity in communication, an ability to explain complex technical concepts in writing.\n\nDemonstrated ability to understand users whose needs and contexts differ from your own, such as research across varied user populations, domains, or cultures.\n\nSeveral years of experience in a role focused on how people interact with technology, such as product design, UX research, content or conversation design, or model behavior work at an AI lab.\n\nPreferred qualifications - we encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet all preferred qualifications, but at least some: \n\nHave past experience in designing model behavior or personality, or influencing technical roadmaps related to unverifiable domains.\n\nPast experience in crafting research taste, model values, epistemics, or philosophies\n\nHands-on experience with large language models, including writing and iterating on prompts, evaluating outputs, and building an intuition for why a model behaves the way it does.\n\nA portfolio or writing samples that show exceptional taste and clarity, ideally including work that shaped how a product or system communicates with people.\n\nA track record of taking ambiguous, loosely defined problems from framing to shipped results, working across research, product, and engineering.\n\nExperience designing and running experiments (qualitative studies, A/B tests, or model evaluations) and making decisions based on the results, including dropping ideas the evidence didn't support.\n\nComfort with quantitative analysis: you can read eval results, find patterns in data, and explain findings to both technical and non-technical audiences.\n\nA clear point of view on how AI should support human judgment rather than replace it, shown through your past work or writing.\n\nLogistics\nLocation: This role is based in San Francisco, California.\n\nCompensation: Depending on background, skills and experience, the expected annual salary range for this position is $300,000 - $400,000 USD.\n\nVisa sponsorship: We sponsor visas. While we can't guarantee success for every candidate or role, if you're the right fit, we're committed to working through the visa process together.\n\nBenefits: Thinking Machines offers generous health, dental, and vision benefits, unlimited PTO, paid parental leave, and relocation support as needed.","description_format":"text","description_chars":4445,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Parental leave","Unlimited PTO"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["Multimodal AI","Foundation Models","AI Research Labs","AI Development Tools"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-01T07:33:04Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 30","filings_12m":30,"filings_prev_12m":8,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":192500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-03T21:08:04+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":76,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.841,"p_room":0.9,"age_days":11,"expected_fill_days":29,"reasons":["conf:2","velocity","win:mid"],"computed_at":"2026-10-12T06:55:09Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":400000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/thinking-machines-lab-model-behavior-model-designer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/thinking-machines-lab-model-behavior-model-designer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-12T11:42:27Z","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":18202,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-13T00:00:00Z"}},"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":14382},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=14382"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fthinking-machines-lab-model-behavior-model-designer"},{"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%2Fthinking-machines-lab-model-behavior-model-designer"},{"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%2Fthinking-machines-lab-model-behavior-model-designer"},{"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/thinking-machines-lab-model-behavior-model-designer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fthinking-machines-lab-model-behavior-model-designer"}]}