{"id":986729,"url":"https://alion.io/job/thinking-machines-lab-research-finetuning-science","title":"Research, Finetuning Science","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":{"grade":"B","score":76,"open_postings":21,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.952,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":29,"computed_at":"2026-11-06T05:58:05Z"}},"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":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"JAX","optional":false},{"name":"LoRA","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Post-training","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"TensorFlow","optional":false},{"name":"PEFT","optional":true},{"name":"RLAIF","optional":true},{"name":"RLHF","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-16T23:21:35Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-16","last_verified_at":"2026-11-06T09:40:16Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":50,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":50},"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\nAt Thinking Machines we build tools that enable people to make AI their own, customizing models to serve their unique needs. This includes the ability to train model weights.\nIn this role, you'll work on frontier customization techniques and help build the best post-training engine in the industry - Tinker - drawing on a whole-stack understanding of RL science. Findings directly shape Tinker's training defaults, API design, and the open-source Tinker Cookbook. You'll work with our internal research teams as well as contributing to open science for external partners.\nWhat You’ll Do\nIn this role, you'll advance the science of fine-tuning and frontier post-training techniques. You’ll:\nContribute to areas like LoRA and parameter efficient fine-tuning and how to push customization quality, efficiency, and reliability to the frontier.\n\nShip research into product: inform Tinker's training defaults and primitives, and codify best-practice methods as recipes in the Tinker Cookbook.\n\nImprove the stability, efficiency, and reliability of large-scale fine-tuning and RL runs on Tinker.\n\nShare what you learn through papers, technical blog posts, and community contributions.\n\nYou’ll contribute to areas like LoRA, parameter-efficient fine-tuning, how things interact with RL and post-training, and how to push customization quality, efficiency, and reliability to the frontier.\nSkills and Qualifications\nRequired qualifications:\nBachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Physics, Mathematics, or a related discipline with strong theoretical and empirical grounding.\n\nProficiency in Python and familiarity with deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX). Comfort debugging distributed training and writing code that scales.\n\nClarity in communication, an ability to explain complex technical concepts in writing.\n\nStrong interest in our mission to enable custom models.\n\nPreferred qualifications - we encourage you to apply if you meet some but not all of these:\nA strong grasp of probability, statistics, and ML fundamentals. You can look at experimental data and distinguish between real effects, noise, and bugs.\n\nPrior experience with RLHF, RLAIF, preference modeling, or reward learning for large models.\n\nExperience managing or analyzing human data collection campaigns or large-scale annotation workflows.\n\nResearch or engineering contributions in alignment, data-centric AI, or human-AI collaboration.\n\nExperience with RL training stability techniques for large runs.\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.\n\nAs set forth in Thinking Machines' Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3814,"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":"2026-09-17T00:09:12Z"}],"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":"2026-10-29T16:27:21+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":28}],"liveness":{"score":19,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.428,"p_room":0.45,"age_days":50,"expected_fill_days":29,"reasons":["conf:0","stale_co","velocity","win:tail"],"computed_at":"2026-11-06T05:58:05Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":475000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/thinking-machines-lab-research-finetuning-science","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/thinking-machines-lab-research-finetuning-science.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-06T12:35:46Z","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":22909,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-07T00:00:00Z"}},"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-finetuning-science"},{"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-finetuning-science"},{"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-finetuning-science"},{"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-finetuning-science\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fthinking-machines-lab-research-finetuning-science"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":986729}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"thinkingmachines.ai","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":986729},"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. 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