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LLM Research Scientist (Pre-training & Computer Vision & Adversarial Robustness)

Mercor · 100% remote · Contract · Posted

Pay
$100–120/hr
Location
Worldwide
Languages
English
Hours
Flexible
Openings
Not listed
Level
Expert
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Summary

Conduct machine learning research on training and improving deep learning models for vision and language, focusing on adversarial robustness, efficient model compression, and post-training of open-weight LLMs.

What you'll do

  • Train image classifiers and generative models from scratch
  • Fine-tune open-weight language models
  • Optimize models for limited data, compute, and size budgets
  • Make models robust to adversarial inputs and conversations
  • Compress models to meet size and latency constraints
  • Diagnose and resolve training issues

Requirements

  • Experience with adversarial training of image classifiers
  • Experience evaluating robust accuracy under threat models like AutoAttack
  • Experience with model compression: quantization, pruning, distillation
  • Experience training image generative models (diffusion, GANs, VAEs)
  • Experience with LLM post-training: SFT, DPO, RLHF
  • Experience with multilingual pre-training
  • Strong experience with PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow
  • 3+ years of machine learning research experience

Skills

  • PyTorch
  • JAX
  • TensorFlow
  • Adversarial Training
  • Model Compression
  • Diffusion Models
  • LLM Fine-Tuning
  • Computer Vision

Full description

We're looking for experienced machine learning researchers with hands-on experience training and improving deep learning models end-to-end, across vision and language. You'll work on well-scoped empirical open-ended ML research problems.

Responsibilities

  • Train image classifiers and generative image models from scratch, and fine-tune open-weight language models.
  • Get the most out of limited data, compute, and model-size budgets.
  • Make models robust — to adversarial inputs and to adversarial conversations.
  • Compress models to meet hard size and latency constraints without sacrificing accuracy.
  • Diagnose and resolve training issues.

Requirements

We are looking for candidates with strong expertise in one or more of the following areas:

Adversarial Robustness

Experience with:

  • Adversarial training of image classifiers (e.g. PGD-based training, TRADES).
  • Evaluating robust accuracy under standard threat models (e.g. L∞ attacks, AutoAttack) and avoiding gradient-masking pitfalls.
  • Managing the robustness–accuracy trade-off and robust overfitting.

Efficient Computer Vision

Experience with:

  • Training image classifiers end-to-end, especially for fine-grained recognition (many visually similar classes, few examples per class).
  • Model compression: quantization, pruning, and knowledge distillation from large teachers into small students.
  • Deploying models under hard size or latency budgets (on-device, edge, or embedded settings).

Generative Image Modeling

Experience with:

  • Training image generative models from scratch: diffusion models, GANs, VAEs, or flow-based models.
  • Iterating against sample-quality metrics such as FID.
  • Training-efficiency tricks that produce good generators quickly and at small parameter counts.

LLM Post-Training & Behavioral Robustness

Hands-on experience with one or more of:

  • Supervised fine-tuning and preference optimisation (DPO, RLHF, RLAIF) of open-weight language models, including building your own datasets via synthetic generation, noisy or weak supervision, and rejection sampling.
  • Shaping conversational behaviour over multiple turns: resistance to persuasion and sycophancy, calibrated confidence, and knowing when to accept corrections.
  • Alignment-style fine-tuning that changes a specific behaviour while preserving general capability.

Multilingual Pre-training

Experience with:

  • Training multilingual or low-resource-language models from scratch.
  • Tokenizer design across scripts and typologically diverse languages.
  • Balancing highly unequal per-language data (sampling temperatures, cross-lingual transfer) in data-constrained regimes.

Additional Areas of Interest

Experience in any of the following is a plus:

  • Scaling laws and training-efficiency research.
  • Curriculum learning and data ordering.
  • Model evaluation: benchmark construction, contamination control, statistically sound comparisons.
  • Uncertainty estimation and model calibration.
  • Data augmentation and synthetic data for robustness.

General Qualifications

  • 3+ years of machine learning research experience (PhD research counts toward this requirement).
  • Strong experience with PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow, or similar ML frameworks.
  • Degree from a top-100 university, experience at a FAANG or comparable AI company, or an equivalent research track record through publications or impactful open-source contributions.

Why Join

  • Work on cutting-edge machine learning research.
  • Collaborate with leading AI researchers on challenging, high-impact projects.
  • Flexible, project-based work with competitive compensation.

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