Evaluations Engineer

Vals AI, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation support

Health insurance

Lunch provided

401K

Unlimited PTO

Housing stipend

Job summary

Vals AI, Inc. is seeking engineers to own and expand our leaderboards, evaluating new LLM models against benchmarks across law, tax, coding, finance, and more. You will analyze error modes, compare strengths and weaknesses, and collaborate with a communications team to share results.

The role emphasizes strong Python engineering, sprint-based work, and close collaboration with both open-source and foundation model labs. Relocation and in-person SF work are supported as needed.

Qualifications

• Familiarity with the space of large language models and current leading models.
• Strong engineering fundamentals and ability to ship quickly with high quality.
• Significant Python experience in a professional setting.
• Experience working in sprints, Git workflows, and code reviews.
• Willingness to work long hours during model releases and meet tight deadlines.

Responsibilities

• Evaluate new LLM model releases across the Vals AI benchmarks.
• Collaborate with open-source and closed-source labs to assess model performance.
• Use Docent to analyze failure modes and patterns in model output.
• Publish findings with our social media team.
• Add new models and maintain integrations in the model library.
• Maintain and improve benchmark infrastructure (agentic and non-agentic).

Skills

Python

LLM knowledge

Engineering fundamentals

Team collaboration

Git & CI

Tools

Docent

Django

AWS

CDK

Job description

About the Role

We are looking for strong engineers to join our team and own the leaderboards that appear on Vals AI.

You'll be responsible for testing new models against our benchmarks as they're released; covering tasks in law, tax, coding, finance, social mobility, and more. You will analyze error modes of models, evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, and work with our communications team to release results.

Our results are used by startups, enterprises, and research labs alike. We work with all the major foundation model labs, some of the largest financial institutions, and hospital systems in the world. Our work has been featured by the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Bloomberg.

We are building the standard for evaluating the ability of LLMs to perform real-world tasks. You will contribute directly to the leaderboards that make this possible.

What You’ll Do

• Evaluate new LLM model releases across the Vals AI suite of benchmarks

• Work directly with both open-source and closed-source foundation model labs in evaluating model performance

• Use tools like Docent to analyze common failure modes and patterns in model performance

• Work directly with our social media team to post interesting findings and results

• Add new models and maintain integrations in our model library

• Help improve and maintain the infrastructure we use to run benchmarks (agentic and non-agentic).

This role follows the rhythm of model releases. Expect intense sprints in the days following a major launch, and calmer stretches in between releases.

Requirements

• Familiarity with the LLMs: You should already be familiar with the space - the current leading models, relative performance across them, how to use large language models in practice.

• Strong engineering fundamentals: You can build and ship quickly with high quality. You should have a track record of building things of significant scope (at jobs, side projects, open source, etc.)

• Python expertise: Significant experience in Python, especially in a professional setting.

• Team collaboration: Experience working in development sprints, Git workflows, and pull request reviews.

• Strong work ethic: Willingness to work long hours during model releases and get high-quality results out under tight deadlines.

• Location: We are an in-person team based in San Francisco. We will support your relocation or transportation as needed.

Nice-to-Haves

• Previous experience with benchmarking large language models, or creating benchmarks

• Previous experience working at a startup or starting your own company

• Technical writing experience and ability

• Machine learning research experience

What We Offer

• Highly competitive salary and meaningful ownership. Excellence is well rewarded.

• Relocation and transportation support

• Health/dental insurance coverage

• Lunch and dinner provided, free snacks/coffee/drinks

• 401K plan

• Unlimited PTO

• $1,500 housing stipend (within one-mile radius)

About Us

Founding team: The core methodology behind this platform comes from NLP evaluation research we conducted at Stanford. We raised a $5M seed from some of the top institutional and angel investors in the valley. Our team has prior work experience at NVIDIA, Meta, Microsoft, Palantir and HRT. Collectively, we have over 300 citations in our published work. Our early team includes Stanford PhDs, ex-Jane Street quants, and the first designer at Snorkel.

We recently announced our $40M Series A at a $400M valuation, led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from existing investors 8VC, Pear VC, and Bloomberg and new investors Hudson River Trading and NextLadder Ventures.

Tech stack: We use Python for most things at Vals AI. Our platform is built on Django, with a React frontend. All of the infra is on AWS using CDK for IaC.

What We're Looking For

• Learning velocity: The role encompasses a wide variety of tasks. Rather than expecting you to be an expert on Day 1, we are looking for someone who can learn new skills and technologies quickly.

• Ownership: Working in a small, talent-dense team, we expect everyone to show initiative to build where it's needed, not where it's asked. We strive for autonomy over consensus.

• Intensity: The LLM landscape is constantly changing. Foundation model labs are continuously pushing the frontier. The unicorn companies that will emerge from this technology shift are being built now. Those that win will have an incredibly high speed of execution.

• Solution-oriented mindset: We're looking for people who see opportunities to craft solutions at each juncture, not those who pass hard problems to others or admit defeat.

Vals in the Media:

• AI tools mostly fumble basic financial tasks, study finds

• The Winners (and Losers) of This New Vibe-Coding Benchmark Will Surprise You

• OpenAI’s Less-Flashy Rival Might Have a Better Business Model

• Meta Announces New AI Model in Major Test of Company’s Ambitions

• DeepSeek’s Sequel Set to Extend China’s Reach in Open-Source A.I.