ML Research Lead | LLM | Reinforcement Learning | Foundational Models | Pre-Training | Hybrid, New York

ML Research Lead | LLM | Reinforcement Learning | Foundational Models | Pre-Training | Hybrid, New York

• Location: New York (3–4 days in-office)
• Stage: Series A | ~7-person team (scaling rapidly)

• About the Company
• We’re a frontier AI research lab building foundation models for financial markets.
• Our mission is ambitious:

👉 Train the world’s best models for investing — and ultimately remove the need for manual trading altogether.

This is not incremental work. We are:

• Training models end-to-end from scratch (not just fine-tuning)
• Building reinforcement learning loops grounded in real P&L
• Designing a domain-specific AI stack for financial decision-making

Backed by top-tier investors following our Series A, we are a small, high-calibre team scaling quickly.

• The Role
• We’re hiring a Foundation Model Training Lead to take ownership of our core models.
• This is a deeply technical, high-impact role at the intersection of large-scale model training, reinforcement learning, and financial systems.

• You will be responsible for the full lifecycle of model development, from pretraining through post-training optimization — shaping both the architecture and the training strategy.
• For the right candidate, this role can evolve into a Head of AI / Research Lead position.

• What You’ll Do
• Lead the end-to-end training of large-scale foundation models
• Design and implement pretraining and continued training strategies on financial data
• Own model architecture decisions, including:
• Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) design and routing
• Tokenization strategies for financial data
• Build and iterate on RL training loops tied to real-world trading performance (P&L)
• Develop systems for training stability, scaling, and performance optimization
• Define and execute data strategy (dataset construction, curation, filtering, labeling)
• Work closely with engineering to build scalable training infrastructure
• Contribute to the broader research direction and technical roadmap

• What We’re Looking For
• Proven experience training large-scale models end-to-end(not just fine-tuning existing models)
• Strong background in deep learning and large model architectures
• Experience with reinforcement learning in real-world or production settings
• Hands-on work with MoE architectures and/or distributed training systems
• Deep understanding of:
• Training dynamics and instability
• Scaling laws and optimization
• Data quality and curation for large models
• Ability to operate in a high-ownership, fast-moving environment

• Nice to Have
• Experience applying ML to financial markets or trading systems
• Familiarity with low-latency or real-time systems
• Prior experience in early-stage or research-heavy environments

• Why This Role
• Work on a greenfield problem at the frontier of AI + finance
• Direct ownership over core model development
• Opportunity to shape an entirely new category of AI systems
• Clear path to Head of AI / Research leadership
• Join at an early stage with outsized impact on company direction

• How We Work
• Small, highly technical team with deep focus and high velocity
• Emphasis on first-principles thinking and experimentation
• Tight feedback loops between research, models, and real-world outcomes
• In-person collaboration in NYC (3–4 days/week)

ML Research Lead | LLM | Reinforcement Learning | Foundational Models | Pre-Training | Hybrid, New York