Member of Technical Staff, Model Training (applied research)

Zekai; United States; Remote; USD 200,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity compensation

Performance bonuses

Remote-first workforce

Health insurance reimbursement

401(k) plan with company match

Job summary

Zekai is seeking a Member of Technical Staff, Model Training (applied research) for a fully remote position. You will work across language models, multimodal systems, robotics, and autonomous agents to develop models optimized for specific applications and environments.

You will own the full model development lifecycle, from data requirements to production deployment, with emphasis on efficiency, latency, and cost. Collaborate with research and platform teams to bring prototypes to scale.

Qualifications

• Strong foundations in machine learning and deep learning.
• Hands-on experience with training, adapting, and evaluating AI models.
• Proficiency in Python and PyTorch for training, evaluation, and inference pipelines.
• Ability to translate application requirements into measurable model objectives and benchmarks.
• Solid software engineering fundamentals for maintainable production code.
• Familiarity with fine-tuning, distillation, imitation learning, or reinforcement learning.
• Good experimental judgment to identify bottlenecks and trade-offs.

Responsibilities

• Train, fine-tune, and adapt language, vision-language, and robotics models.
• Develop specialized models for multimodal understanding and autonomous agents.
• Build simulation-based training and evaluation environments for policy learning.
• Combine demonstrations, human feedback, synthetic datasets, and trajectories into training data and curricula.
• Develop models that power partner workflows for data generation, annotation, and automated grading.
• Incorporate expert corrections and model feedback into iterative training cycles.
• Optimize models for production inference balancing quality, latency, and cost against frontier baselines.
• Collaborate with research and platform teams to productionize prototypes into scalable deployments.

Skills

ML foundations

Hands-on ML training

Python and PyTorch

Requirements-to-objectives translation

Software engineering fundamentals

Model adaptation techniques

Experimental judgment

Job description

Job Title: Member of Technical Staff, Model Training (applied research)

Job Type: Full-time

Location: Remote

The Role

In this role, you will work across language models, multimodal systems, robotics, and autonomous agents, developing models optimized for specific applications and environments. You will own the full model development lifecycle, from understanding application requirements and designing training datasets to model adaptation, evaluation, and production deployment.

Our objective is to build specialized models that match or exceed the quality of frontier models on targeted workloads while significantly improving inference efficiency, latency, and cost.

You will operate at the intersection of applied machine learning research and production engineering, turning advances in model training into reliable, high-performance systems with measurable real-world impact.

What You'll Do

• Train, fine-tune, and adapt language, vision-language, and robotics models using supervised fine-tuning (SFT), reinforcement learning (RL), imitation learning, and distillation.
• Develop specialized models for complex applications, including multimodal understanding, robotic perception and control, and autonomous agents capable of reasoning, planning, and tool use.
• Build simulation-based training and evaluation environments to study policy learning, task generalization, and the transfer of capabilities from simulated to real-world settings.
• Combine expert demonstrations, human feedback, synthetic datasets, and environment-generated trajectories into effective training datasets, reward signals, and learning curricula.
• Develop specialized models that power our partner's flow ecosystem, improving data generation, annotation, quality assurance, and automated grading workflows.
• Incorporate expert corrections and model performance feedback into iterative training cycles to continuously improve accuracy, robustness, and task success.
• Optimize models for production inference, balancing quality, latency, throughput, and computational efficiency against frontier-model baselines.
• Collaborate with research and platform engineering teams to transition promising prototypes into scalable, production-ready model deployments.

What We're Looking For

• Strong foundations in machine learning and deep learning, with hands-on experience training, adapting, and evaluating modern AI models.
• Practical experience in one or more areas, including large language models, vision-language models, robotics, reinforcement learning, or autonomous agents.
• Strong proficiency in Python and PyTorch, with the ability to develop reliable training, evaluation, and inference pipelines.
• Experience translating application requirements into measurable model objectives, benchmarks, and performance improvements.
• Solid software engineering fundamentals, including the ability to build maintainable systems and move research prototypes toward production.
• Familiarity with model adaptation techniques such as fine-tuning, distillation, imitation learning, or reinforcement learning.
• Strong experimental judgment and the ability to independently identify performance bottlenecks, evaluate trade-offs, and iterate toward effective solutions.

Nice to Have

• Experience with robotics, embodied AI, vision-language-action models, or simulation-based policy learning.
• Familiarity with agent frameworks, tool-using models, and environment-driven training.
• Experience with synthetic data generation, human-in-the-loop learning, or automated evaluation systems.
• Knowledge of inference optimization techniques, including quantization, batching, model compression, and efficient serving.
• Experience deploying specialized models in production environments with demanding latency, reliability, or cost requirements.
• Research contributions or open-source work in applied machine learning, multimodal AI, robotics, or agent systems.

Compensation & Benefits Notice

The national pay range for this full-time position is base salary of $200,000 –$320,000. All employees are eligible for equity compensation, and employees may also receive performance-based bonuses, dependent on role and subject to company policies. our partner provides a comprehensive benefits package, including up to 100% reimbursement for health-insurance premiums, paid time off, a 401(K) plan with a company match, and additional benefits designed to support a high-performing, remote-first workforce.

our partner is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation during the application process, reach out to support@our partner.

Our hiring process utilizes artificial intelligence tools to assist in candidate screening and assessment. Our AI tools are designed to complement, not replace, human decision-making.

This is a 100% remote contract role, open to applicants worldwide in the countries the employer accepts.