Machine Learning Researcher

About the Lab & Mission

We are a stealth-stage applied AI research lab located in New York City , backed by top-tier investors and AI leaders. We are tackling one of the final frontiers in artificial intelligence: computational creativity .

We are building a foundational intelligence layer engineered for superhuman creative reasoning, artistic decision-making, and divergent thinking. Our goal is to give anyone the ability to feel like a genius creator by simply chatting with AI.

We operate as a tight-knit, high-velocity team of researchers, systems engineers, and world-class artists.

The Role

We are seeking an ML Research Scientist to invent new methods beyond standard pattern matching and teach LLMs genuine creative reasoning, taste, and judgment.

What You’ll Do

• Invent Next-Gen Training Recipes: Develop novel post-training algorithms, RL recipes (GRPO, RLVR, DPO), and process-level reward verifiers to teach LLMs creative reasoning and long-horizon planning.
• Master LLM Alignment & Reasoning: Advance Chain-of-Thought (CoT), System 2 reasoning, synthetic preference data generation, and reward modeling to guide model behavior in subjective, high-taste creative domains.
• Unbounded Compute & Scale: Access massive multi-GPU clusters (H100/H200) to scale research ideas from zero-to-one concepts directly into production models.
• Encode Creative Taste: Work side-by-side with world-class directors, designers, and writers to decode human creative judgment and embed it into model loss functions.
• Ship Frontier Research: Move at early-stage startup speed with zero paper queues, middle management, or \"cool demo\" limbo—your research ships directly into systems used by millions.

What We’re Looking For

• Academic & Research Pedigree: PhD in CS/ML from a top institution (or an exceptional M.Sc. with a proven track record of breakthrough research).
• Publication Track Record: Multiple first-author papers at top-tier ML venues ( NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR ). Oral or Spotlight presentations are a strong positive signal.
• Deep LLM & Post-Training Expertise: Proven experience in LLM mid-training, continual pre-training, SFT, RLHF, GRPO, RLVR, or reasoning distillation.
• First-Principles Mathematical Depth: Mastery of probability, optimization, and statistical learning theory needed to invent new algorithms from scratch rather than wrapping existing frameworks.
• Founding DNA: High ambition, comfort with startup ambiguity, and a strong drive to own a significant piece of a technology revolution.

Why Join Us?

• True Founding Ownership: $250k–$600k cash + 1.5%–2.5% founding equity (\"Better to own 1% of a revolution than 0.001% of an evolution\").
• No Research Shelf-Life: Direct pipeline from whiteboard to production.
• Frictionless Visa Support: Dedicated legal team providing fast-tracked O-1 / EB-1 petitioning and H-1B support.
• Remote across the US or in-person in NYC.