{"id":3674700,"url":"https://alion.io/job/weekday-founding-data-scientist","title":"Founding Data Scientist","company":{"id":7097,"name":"Weekday","domain":"weekday.works","url":"https://alion.io/company/weekday","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":true,"employer_type":"agency","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workable","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":81,"open_postings":93,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.978,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":6,"computed_at":"2026-11-06T05:58:05Z"}},"role":"Data Science","role_family":"Data Science","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":["Gurgaon, India"],"countries":["IN"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"DeepSpeed","optional":false},{"name":"DPO","optional":false},{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"FSDP","optional":false},{"name":"Gemma","optional":false},{"name":"Llama","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"LoRA","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"PEFT","optional":false},{"name":"Post-training","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"Qwen","optional":false},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":false},{"name":"SFT","optional":false},{"name":"SGLang","optional":false},{"name":"Transformers","optional":false},{"name":"vLLM","optional":false},{"name":"GRPO","optional":true},{"name":"PPO","optional":true},{"name":"Reward Modeling","optional":true},{"name":"RLHF","optional":true}],"status":"closed","first_seen_at":"2026-11-03T10:26:04Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-03","last_verified_at":"2026-11-05T16:44:12Z","board_verified":false,"closed_at":"2026-11-05T16:44:12Z","days_open":2,"trust":{"level":"not_scored","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":2},"description":"This role is for one of Weekday’s clients\nMin Experience: 8+ years\nLocation: Gurgaon\nJobType: full-time\nWe are looking for a highly skilled and hands-on Founding Data Scientist to build, fine-tune, and post-train large language models (LLMs) that power autonomous AI agents. This is a founding-level opportunity to take ownership of the complete model improvement lifecycle, from training data creation and reward design to supervised fine-tuning (SFT), reinforcement learning, evaluation, and production deployment.\nThe organisation is building an AI-powered personal assistant designed to help users complete real-world tasks, including making calls, managing bookings, coordinating services, and handling payments. Its autonomous AI agents are designed to plan, execute, and deliver verified outcomes.\nYou will work directly with the founding team to develop proprietary AI models and infrastructure, using real-world user interactions and task outcomes to continuously improve model performance. This is a deeply technical role suited to engineers and researchers who have hands-on experience training, fine-tuning, and deploying LLMs rather than simply building applications using third-party LLM APIs.\nRequirements\nKey Responsibilities\n LLM Post-Training: Fine-tune open-weight language models such as Llama, Qwen, and Gemma using supervised fine-tuning (SFT), Direct Preference Optimization (DPO), and reinforcement learning techniques.\nReinforcement Learning: Design reward functions and optimise model policies using real-world task outcomes, user preferences, and agent performance signals.\nAgent Data Pipelines: Build high-quality training datasets using agent trajectories, tool interactions, execution traces, and preference signals.\nModel Evaluation: Develop benchmarks and evaluation frameworks to measure reasoning, tool usage, decision-making, and end-to-end task completion.\nTraining and Inference: Execute distributed model training and high-throughput inference using PyTorch, FSDP, DeepSpeed, vLLM, and SGLang.\nProduction Ownership: Deploy, optimise, monitor, and continuously improve fine-tuned models in production environments.\nConduct experiments with model architectures, training methodologies, and optimisation techniques to improve model quality and reliability.\nAnalyse model failures, identify performance bottlenecks, and implement improvements across the training and inference lifecycle.\nTake end-to-end ownership of model development, from experimentation and training to deployment and ongoing optimisation.\nRequired Qualifications\n 8+ years of relevant experience in Data Science, Machine Learning, AI Engineering, or related technical fields.\nHands-on experience post-training open-weight LLMs using SFT, DPO, and/or reinforcement learning techniques.\nProven experience deploying fine-tuned language models in production environments.\nStrong proficiency in Python, PyTorch, Transformers, attention mechanisms, and modern LLM architectures.\nExperience with LoRA/PEFT, distributed training using FSDP or DeepSpeed, mixed-precision training, and multi-GPU infrastructure.\nPractical experience using vLLM or SGLang for high-throughput inference and agent rollouts.\nExperience building LLM training datasets, agent trajectories, preference datasets, and model evaluation frameworks.\nStrong understanding of model optimisation, experimentation, performance analysis, and failure diagnosis.\nAbility to work independently, solve complex machine learning problems, and take ownership in a fast-paced startup environment.\nGood-to-Have Skills\nExperience with Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), and Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF).\nFamiliarity with reward modelling and reward-function optimisation.\nExperience developing or improving long-horizon autonomous AI agents.\nExposure to advanced reinforcement learning techniques for improving reasoning, planning, and tool-use capabilities.\nIdeal Candidate Profile\nThe ideal candidate is an engineer or scientist who has actually trained, fine-tuned, and shipped LLMs in real-world environments. You should enjoy solving complex machine learning challenges, experimenting with model architectures and training techniques, and building proprietary AI systems from the ground up.\nYou should be comfortable working directly with founders, making technical decisions, and taking complete ownership of model development in a fast-moving founding team.\nWhy Join?\nBuild proprietary AI models and infrastructure from the ground up.\nWork on challenging problems in LLM post-training, reinforcement learning, and agentic AI.\nCollaborate directly with experienced AI and product founders.\nShape the technical foundation of an AI-powered personal assistant designed to serve millions of users.\nRole Details\nPosition: Founding Data Scientist\nExperience: 8+ Years\nLocation: Gurgaon\nWork Mode: Work from office, 6 days a week\nMust-Have Skills: SFT, LLM\nGood-to-Have Skills: PPO, GRPO, RLHF","description_format":"text","description_chars":5008,"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":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":[],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-03T10:26:04Z"},{"event":"close","at":"2026-11-05T16:44:12Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":null,"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/weekday-founding-data-scientist","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/weekday-founding-data-scientist.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-06T08:35:23Z","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":15456,"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":7097},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=7097"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fweekday-founding-data-scientist"},{"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%2Fweekday-founding-data-scientist"},{"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%2Fweekday-founding-data-scientist"},{"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/weekday-founding-data-scientist\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fweekday-founding-data-scientist"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3674700}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"weekday.works","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3674700},"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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