Research Engineer, FlexOlmo Seattle, WA View job

Role: Research Engineer, FlexOlmo
Location: Seattle, WA

Role Overview:
Ai2 is seeking talented and motivated Research Engineers to work on the next generation of large language model architectures, with a focus on Mixture-of-Experts (MoE), long-context language models (LCLMs), and flexible data use. The FlexOlmo team designs new architectures and training methods that help models use data more effectively—through improved training, inference-time conditioning, and retrieval—broadening the types of data they can leverage and ultimately enhancing performance. You will be part of the core team of research engineers working on the infrastructure, architecture, modeling, and training of the next generation of foundation model architectures, with a focus on continual learning. In this role, you will own the design and implementation of the systems that train these models, building scalable machine learning pipelines as we push the boundaries of large language modeling research.

Responsibilities:
The essential functions include, but are not limited to the following:
- Building infrastructure to facilitate the next generation of LLM research.
- Optimizing training and inference for language models.
- Triaging between experiments and executing on the most impactful.
- Bridging the gap between cutting-edge research and a widely adopted product.
- Bringing software engineering best practices to a research environment.
- Supporting and collaborating with an open-source community.
- Releasing contributions back to the broader community in the form of open source software, model releases, and additions to Ai2’s public API and open research datasets, as well as technical reports.

Requirements and Qualifications:
What You’ll Need:
- A bachelor’s degree in Data Science/CS/EE/Applied Mathematics/Statistics/ML/NLP, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience, and expertise at building ML infrastructure.
- 4+ years of experience building infrastructure that handles data preprocessing/transformation and model training, evaluation, inference, and deployment. Experience in the complete model development cycle, including data set construction, training, tuning, evaluation, performance profiling, and monitoring.
- Knowledge of modern deep learning and natural language processing techniques.
- Strong software engineering skills, particularly around building performant systems and debugging.
- Must have experience with Python and PyTorch/Jax/Tensorflow as well as feel at ease in picking up new programming languages, libraries, or APIs as tools as project needs evolve.
- Familiarity working with cloud compute resources (e.g. AWS) and containerization (e.g. Docker).
- Strong collaboration and communication skills.

Bonus qualifications:
- Advanced degree in Data Science/CS/EE/Applied Mathematics/Statistics/ML/NLP or related fields and/or relevant and equivalent engineering experience.
- Contributions to open-source ML or research libraries (e.g. spaCy, AllenNLP, transformers).
- Experience successfully operating models at scale in a production setting.
- Experience in HPC settings.
- Curiosity about AI research.

Physical Demands and Work Environment:
- Must be able to remain in a stationary position for long periods of time.
- The ability to communicate information and ideas so others will understand. Must be able to exchange accurate information in these situations.
- The ability to observe details at close range.
- Can work under deadlines.

What They Offer:
Compensation:
- Base salary range: $128,880 - $193,320.
- Generous bonus plans and participation in the long-term incentive plan.

Benefits:
- Medical, dental, vision, basic life insurance, basic accidental death and dismemberment insurance, short-term disability, long-term disability, and an employee assistance program for team members and their families.
- Voluntary life insurance, voluntary accidental death and dismemberment, health savings account plan, healthcare reimbursement arrangement plan, and health care and dependent care flexible spending account plans.
- Company 401k plan.
- $125 per month to assist with commuting or internet expenses.
- $200 per month for fitness and wellbeing expenses.
- Up to ten sick days per year, up to seven personal days per year, up to 20 vacation days per year, and twelve paid holidays throughout the calendar year.

Culture and Perks:
- A learning organization with weekly Ai2 Academy lectures and world-class AI experts as guest speakers.
- Commitment to diversity, inclusion, and a healthy work/life balance.
- Collaborative and transparent team environment.
- Seattle office located on the water with access to mountains, lakes, and outdoor activities.