Research Engineer - Language Model Pre-Training
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 16, 2026. First seen by Alion on Mar 17, 2026. Zyphra scores D on the Alion truth index.
Zyphra is an artificial intelligence company based in San Francisco, California.
The Role:
As a Research Engineer - Language Model Pre-Training, you'll shape our language model roadmap through end-to-end pretraining development. You will work extremely closely with our pretraining team, who will integrate your insights into our next-generation models.
You'll Work Across:
Large-scale training runs and model parallelization
Performance optimization of our pretraining stack
Dataset collection, processing, and evaluation
Architecture and methodology research, including optimizer ablations
What We're Looking For / Requirements:
Strong engineering aptitude for rapidly implementing reliable and robust systems
Can rapidly learn new fields and are excited to implement new ideas
Excellent communication and collaboration skills, and can work effectively on both research and engineering implementation at scale
Qualifications / Additional Skills:
Deep expertise and intuition for solving machine learning problems and training models
Experience with training on large-scale (multi-node) GPU clusters
Deep understanding of model training pipelines - including model/data parallelism, distributed optimizers, etc.
Strong grasp of proper experimental methodology for running rigorous ablations and other hypothesis testing
Understanding of large-scale, highly parallel data processing pipelines
High proficiency with PyTorch and Python.
Strong ability to dive into large pre-existing codebases and rapidly get up to speed
Published machine learning research in well-respected venues is a plus
Postgraduate degree in a scientific subject (Computer Science, EE/EECS, Math, Physics)
Why Work at Zyphra:
Our research methodology is to make grounded, methodical steps toward ambitious goals. Both deep research and engineering excellence are equally valued
We strongly value new and crazy ideas and are very willing to bet big on new ideas
We move as quickly as we can; we aim to minimize the bar to impact as low as possible
We all enjoy what we do and love discussing AI
Benefits and Perks:
Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and FSA plans
Competitive compensation and 401(k) plan
Relocation and immigration support on a case-by-case basis
In-office snacks and meals provided
Unlimited PTO and company holidays
In-person team in San Francisco with a collaborative, high-energy environment