Machine Learning Engineer, AllenNLP

You are a talented, hands-on engineer who thrives in a fast-paced environment, is self-directed, a team player, and knows how to get things done. You are motivated by creating real-world benefits using AI and are excited to help advance our effort to create the best-performing open large language model. You will be a part of the core team of research engineers behind post-training and aligning the OLMo (Open Language Model) through fine-tuning, instruction-tuning, and RLHF, helping us build infrastructure for the next generation of large language model research. You will also help with data analysis and experimentation to direct the decisions we make and architectures we develop, both around modeling and data preparation. And, you are someone with experience working with open-source projects, deep knowledge of Python, and a strong understanding of modern deep learning and natural language processing.

Who We Are

Open Language Model (OLMo) is the AI2 LLM framework designed to provide access to data, training code, models, and evaluation code necessary to advance AI through open research to empower academics and researchers to study the science of language models collectively. The goal is to share a high quality and open language model that will provide an avenue for people in the AI research community to work directly on language models for the first time. Following the launch of OLMo (Open Language Model), AI2 is now embarking on furthering research to provide scientific insights and solutions on how to substantially close the gap with the state-of-the-art in adapted models.

Your Next Challenge

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.
• Supporting and collaborating with an open-source community.
• Bridging the gap between cutting-edge research and a widely adopted product.
• Using software engineering best practices in a research environment.
• Releasing your 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 Corpus.

What You’ll Need

• Knowledge of modern deep learning and natural language processing techniques.
• Strong software engineering skills, particularly around building performant systems and debugging.
• Experience with the complete model development cycle, including data set construction, training, tuning, evaluation, performance profiling, and monitoring.
• Experience with Python and PyTorch, or Jax.
• Familiarity working with cloud compute resources (e.g. AWS) and containerization (e.g. Docker).

Bonus qualifications

• Advanced degree in Data Science/CS/EE/Applied Mathematics/Statistics/ML/NLP or related fields.
• Contributions to open-source ML or research libraries (e.g. spaCy).
• Experience successfully operating models at scale in a production setting.
• Experience fine-tuning large models with tools like TRL or Open Instruct / methods like DPO, PPO, or supervised fine-tuning.
• Strong collaboration skills - our environment is small and collaborative, and we'd like you to thrive while working closely with others.

Education

• BS or MS in Computer Science, Statistics, Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or a related quantitative field.

Physical Demands and Work Environment

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by a team member to successfully perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the functions.

• 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.

A Little More About AI2

The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence is a non-profit research institute in Seattle founded by Paul Allen. The core mission of AI2 is to contribute to humanity through high-impact research in artificial intelligence.

Benefits

• Team members and their families are covered by medical, dental, vision, basic life insurance, basic accidental death and dismemberment insurance, short-term disability, long-term disability, and an employee assistance program.
• Team members are able to enroll in our voluntary life insurance program, our voluntary accidental death and dismemberment program, our health savings account plan, our healthcare reimbursement arrangement plan, and our health care and dependent care flexible spending account plans.
• Team members are able to enroll in our company’s 401k plan.
• Team members will receive $125 per month to assist with commuting or internet expenses and will also receive $200 per month for fitness and wellbeing expenses.
• Team members will also receive 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.
• Team members will be able to receive annual bonuses and can participate in the long-term incentive plan.

AI2 is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. You may view the related Know Your Rights compliance poster and the Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination Provision by clicking on their corresponding links.

This employer participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with your Form I‑9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S. If E-Verify cannot confirm that you are authorized to work, this employer is required to give you written instructions and an opportunity to contact the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Social Security Administration (SSA) so you can begin to resolve the issue before the employer can take any action against you, including terminating your employment. Employers can only use E-Verify once you have accepted a job offer and completed the Form I‑9.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to employees and applicants with disabilities to the full extent required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). If you feel you need a reasonable accommodation pursuant to the ADA, you are encouraged to contact us at