Applied Researcher (Staff+)

What you'll do

• Lead research projects in evaluation, benchmarks, deal prediction, simulation, and self-improvement; measure system performance against frontier models and competitors.
• Develop evaluation methods and simulated companies to test Lightfield’s AI end to end, and build techniques that help it improve through operation.
• Ship deal-probability models and AI system improvements; publish research and help recruit and mentor the research team.

What they ask for

• 7+ years of applied research experience in ML or NLP.
• PhD or MS in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field, or equivalent research experience.
• Track record of research that shipped or was published, such as papers, open-source models, datasets, or benchmarks.
• Deep hands-on LLM experience, including evaluation, agent design, and retrieval; strong Python and comfort with a production codebase.

Nice to have

• Post-training experience, including SFT, RL, or preference optimization.
• Experience building simulations, synthetic data, or RL environments; forecasting or predictive modeling on business data; or benchmarks adopted by others.

Pay

$220K – $300K • Offers Equity

Tools

LLMs, Python, TypeScript, Node.js, PostgreSQL, SFT, RL

AI focus

Frontier research in simulation, world modeling, evaluation, reinforcement learning, and self-improvement; applying AI to business tasks and deal prediction.