Senior Research Engineer, Olmo + Molmo

The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence

$146K — $220K *
Information Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 4+ years of ML infrastructure experience including data preprocessing and model deployment
  • Experience with full model development lifecycle from training to monitoring
  • Familiarity with state-of-the-art model architectures like LLMs and vision-language models
  • Knowledge of agentic systems involving tools and workflow management
  • Strong software engineering skills for building scalable systems
  • Proficient in Python and a major ML framework (PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow)
  • Experience with cloud services and containerization solutions (e.g., GCP, AWS, Docker)
  • Excellent communication and teamwork abilities in a small team environment

Responsibilities

  • Build and optimize infrastructure for large language models and multimodal research
  • Design, train, and evaluate multimodal models and agent-based workflows
  • Lead and scope impactful research projects, prioritizing key experiments
  • Apply software engineering best practices within the research setting
  • Contribute to open-source initiatives with model releases and public APIs

Benefits

  • Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and their families
  • Health savings account and flexible spending account options available
  • 401(k) plan enrollment offered
  • Monthly stipends for commuting and fitness expenses
  • Generous paid time off policies including sick, personal, and vacation days
  • Eligibility for annual bonuses and long-term incentive plans
Full Job Description
Persons in these roles are expected to work from our offices in Seattle. On-site requirements vary based on position and team. If you have questions about on-site work arrangements for this role, please ask your recruiter.
Our base salary range is $146,880 - $220,320, and in addition we have generous bonus plans to provide a competitive compensation package.

Who You Are:

To thrive as a Research Engineer at Ai2, you'll bring a blend of deep technical expertise and a collaborative, self-directed mindset. You have extensive experience with deep learning and/or foundation models - whether through a PhD in ML or equivalent hands-on industry work. You're a curious, agile engineer who can generate ideas, design experiments, and implement them in Python against real AI systems. You communicate research insights clearly to technical stakeholders, and you're energized by working with strong contributors toward shared, ambitious goals.

As a Research Engineer on the team, you'll be a core member responsible for training Ai2's flagship open models (e.g. Olmo, Molmo, and beyond). From system design to experiment release, you'll own end-to-end delivery while collaborating closely with research and engineering colleagues to push the boundaries of open model research.

Your Next Challenge:

Key responsibilities:
  • Building and optimizing infrastructure for LLM, multimodal, and agentic research - including training/inference pipelines, dataset curation, and large-scale preprocessing
  • Designing, training, and evaluating multimodal models (vision + language) and agentic workflows, including tool use, planning, and long-horizon tasks
  • Scoping and leading research projects, prioritizing experiments for highest impact
  • Bringing strong software engineering practices to a research environment and bridging cutting-edge work to production-quality products
  • Contributing to and supporting the open-source community through model releases, datasets, public APIs, and technical reports

What You'll Need:
  • 4+ years of ML infrastructure experience - data preprocessing, model training, evaluation, inference, and deployment
  • Experience with end-to-end model development - dataset construction, training, fine-tuning, evaluation, profiling, and monitoring
  • Familiarity with modern model architectures - including LLMs (MoEs, long-context models), vision-language models (e.g., Molmo, LLaVA), and experience training and evaluating both
  • Agentic systems knowledge - tools, memory, and long-running workflows
  • Strong software engineering fundamentals - performant, scalable systems and confident debugging
  • Proficiency in Python and a major ML framework (PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow), with the flexibility to pick up new tools as needed
  • Familiarity with cloud and containerization (e.g., GCP, AWS, Docker)
  • Strong communication and collaboration skills - we're a small, close-knit team and work best when everyone's pulling in the same direction

Education/Experience:
  • BS or MSc in Computer Science, Statistics, Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or a related quantitative field (or equivalent experience)
  • A minimum of 2 years of software development experience. (or equivalent experience)

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.

Benefits:
  • Team members and their families are covered by medical, dental, vision, and an employee assistance program.
  • Team members are able to enroll in 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.


Note: This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by the team members(s) of this position. Team members will be required to follow any other job-related instructions and to perform any other job-related duties requested by any person authorized to give instructions or assignments. All duties and responsibilities are essential functions and requirements and are subject to possible modification to reasonably accommodate individuals with disabilities. To perform this job successfully, the team member(s) will possess the skills, aptitudes, and abilities to perform each duty proficiently. Some requirements may exclude individuals who pose a direct threat or significant risk to the health or safety of themselves or others. The requirements listed in this document are the minimum levels of knowledge, skills, or abilities. This document does not create an employment contract, implied or otherwise, other than an at will relationship. This position is located in Seattle, WA, USA. Exceptions are made on a case by case basis.

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