{"id":83504,"url":"https://alion.io/job/thinking-machines-lab-research-audio-expertise","title":"Research, Audio Expertise","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":"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":350000,"max":475000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":475000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"JAX","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Multimodal AI","optional":false},{"name":"Post-training","optional":false},{"name":"Pre-training","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"TensorFlow","optional":false},{"name":"Self-Supervised Learning","optional":true},{"name":"Speech Recognition","optional":true},{"name":"Text-to-Speech","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-04T17:42:10Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-04","last_verified_at":"2026-10-20T15:26:08Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":76,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":76},"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\nThinking Machines builds multimodal-first. For us, there is no separate multimodal work. It’s at the core of everything we do, from the scientific goals we’re setting to the infrastructure we’re building. We’re looking for researchers to advance the frontier of audio capabilities. You’ll explore how audio models enable more natural and efficient communication/collaboration, preserving more information and capturing user intent.\nThis is a highly collaborative role. You’ll work closely across pre-training, post-training, and product with world-class researchers, infrastructure engineers, and designers. This is an opportunity to shape the fundamental capabilities of AI systems that millions of people will use.\nThis role blends fundamental research and practical engineering, as we do not distinguish between the two roles internally. You will be expected to write high-performance code and read technical reports. It’s an excellent fit for someone who enjoys both deep theoretical exploration and hands-on experimentation, and who wants to shape the foundations of how AI learns.\nNote: This is an \"evergreen role\" that we keep open on an on-going basis to express interest in this research area. We receive many applications, and there may not always be an immediate role that aligns perfectly with your experience and skills. Still, we encourage you to apply. We continuously review applications and reach out to applicants as new opportunities open. You are welcome to reapply if you get more experience, but please avoid applying more than once every 6 months. You may also find that we put up postings for singular roles for separate, project or team specific needs. In those cases, you're welcome to apply directly in addition to an evergreen role.\nWhat You’ll Do\nOwn research projects on audio training, low-latency inference and conversational responsiveness.\n\nDesign and train large-scale models that natively support audio input and output.\n\nInvestigate scaling behavior such as how data, model size, and compute affect capability and efficiency.\n\nBuild and maintain audio data pipelines, including preprocessing, filtering, segmentation, and alignment for training and evaluation.\n\nCollaborate with data and infrastructure teams to scale audio training efficiently across distributed systems.\n\nPublish and present research that moves the entire community forward. Share code, datasets, and insights that accelerate progress across industry and academia.\n\nSkills and Qualifications\nMinimum qualifications:\nAbility to design, run, and analyze experiments thoughtfully, with demonstrated research judgment and empirical rigor.\n\nUnderstanding of machine learning fundamentals, large-scale training, and distributed compute environments.\n\nProficiency in Python and familiarity with at least one deep learning framework (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX). Comfortable with debugging distributed training and writing code that scales.\n\nBachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Physics, Mathematics, or a related discipline with strong theoretical and empirical grounding.\n\nClarity in communication, an ability to explain complex technical concepts in writing.\n\nPreferred qualifications - we encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet all preferred qualifications, but at least some:\nA strong grasp of probability, statistics, and ML fundamentals. You can look at experimental data and distinguish between real effects, noise, and bugs.\n\nExperience with real-time inference, streaming architectures, or optimization for low latency.\n\nPrior experience training or evaluating large-scale audio or multimodal models.\n\nPublications, releases, or open-source projects related to speech, audio, voice, or similar areas.\n\nDemonstrated experience in audio or speech modeling, including ASR, TTS, or self-supervised audio learning.\n\nPhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Physics, Mathematics, or a related discipline with strong theoretical and empirical grounding; or, equivalent industry research experience.\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 $350,000 - $475,000 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":4990,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"phd","optional":false},"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":"2026-08-04T17:42:10Z"},{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-25T14:37:38Z"}],"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":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":28}],"liveness":{"score":11,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.376,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":76,"expected_fill_days":29,"reasons":["conf:3","velocity","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-20T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":475000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/thinking-machines-lab-research-audio-expertise","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/thinking-machines-lab-research-audio-expertise.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-20T16:15:57Z","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":18612,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-21T00:00:00Z"}},"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-research-audio-expertise"},{"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-research-audio-expertise"},{"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-research-audio-expertise"},{"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-research-audio-expertise\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fthinking-machines-lab-research-audio-expertise"}]}