Young Investigator, FlexOlmo

Persons in these roles are welcome to work remotely from Berkeley, CA.

Compensation: $159,650

Who You Are:

Ai2 is seeking talented and motivated Postdoctoral Young Investigator to join the FlexOlmo team, working on a series of large language models designed for flexible data use, with a focus on Mixture-of-Experts (MoE), long-context language models (LCLMs), and retrieval. Postdoctoral Young Investigators will be based in Berkeley, California.

This opportunity offers a unique opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research in natural language processing and machine learning in an exciting, fast-paced research environment. You have the opportunity to:

• Define and lead a high-impact research project.
• Train and release leading models.
• Collaborate with and learn from team members across Ai2.
• Build open-source software for the research community.
• Author scientific papers for publication in a high-profile conference or journal.

The Young Investigator position:

• Duration: 1-3 years
• Start date: Flexible
• Candidates: Are within one year of completing their PhD, or already have a PhD
• The Allen AI Young Investigator is a postdoctoral program offering unique benefits. The program will enable you to balance working collaboratively on an Ai2 project while having opportunities to mentor junior researchers.

Who We Are: 

We design new architectures and training methods that help models use data more effectively—through improved training, inference-time conditioning, and retrieval—broadening the types of data they can leverage and ultimately enhancing performance. We also develop scientific methodologies for evaluating and understanding these systems. Our team produces high-impact research and expertly engineered open-source tools that accelerate NLP research worldwide.

We lead the FlexOlmo project, whose first release in July 2025 focused on a new Mixture-of-Experts architecture. Looking ahead, we plan to pursue creative, groundbreaking research that delivers scientific insights and practical solutions for building architectures and training methods that unlock the use of large and diverse data sources.

Your Next Challenge:

Why FlexOlmo? We are building the foundation for research into the next generation of language models designed for flexible data use. 

• FlexOlmo is a small, tightly knit team, giving you the unique opportunity to work closely with team members toward one high-impact project.
• We encourage open collaboration projects, even with researchers at external institutions. Team member will be based in Berkeley, with opportunities to engage actively with the University of California, Berkeley, and the BAIR lab. 
• Our pay is competitive, and visa sponsorship is available. 
• We are committed to open science and support students freely publishing papers, as exemplified by our first release: FlexOlmo: Open Language Models for Flexible Data Use.

The essential functions include, but are not limited to the following:

• Dedicated Ai2 mentor who is also a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley.
• 50% work on leading and collaborating on an Ai2 project as an independent contributor (IC).
• 50% work on mentoring junior researchers (PhD students/interns, predoctoral students/interns) as well as opportunities to receive mentorship in academic activities such as grant writing and teaching, if desired.

What You’ll Need:

Qualifications:

• Are within one year of completing their PhD, or already have a PhD, in Computer Science or similar field with research experience in machine learning, natural language processing, language and vision, or related areas. 
• Outstanding individual contributor (IC) skills, especially with deep learning frameworks (e.g. PyTorch).
• An outstanding publication record at AI-related venues, such as NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, COLM, ACL, EMNLP. We will specifically evaluate the quality of publications in terms of rigor and impact, not the quantity.
• Extensive research experience in areas such as large language models, training dynamics, scaling laws, and data curation. Experience with mixture-of-experts, long-context language models, and retrieval is preferred but not required.
• Located [or willing to relocate] in Berkeley, CA.

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.

A Little More About Ai2:

Ai2 is a Seattle based non-profit AI research institute founded in 2014 by the late Paul Allen. Our mission is building breakthrough AI to solve the world’s biggest problems. We develop foundational AI research and innovation to deliver real-world impact through large-scale open models, data, robotics, conservation, and beyond.

In addition to Ai2’s core mission, we also aim to contribute to humanity through our treatment of each member of the Ai2 Team. Some highlights are:

• We are a learning organization – because everything Ai2 does is ground-breaking, we are learning every day. Similarly, through weekly Ai2 Academy lectures, a wide variety of world-class AI experts as guest speakers, and our commitment to your personal on-going education, Ai2 is a place where you will have opportunities to continue learning alongside your coworkers. 
• We value diversity - We seek to hire, support, and promote people from all genders, ethnicities, and all levels of experience regardless of age. We particularly encourage applications from women, non-binary individuals, people of color, members of the LGBTQA+ community, and people with disabilities of any kind. 
• We value inclusion - We understand the value that people's individual experiences and perspectives can bring to an organization, and we are building a culture in which all voices are heard, respected and considered.
• We emphasize a healthy work/life balance – we believe our team members are happiest and most productive when their work/life balance is optimized. While we value powerful research results which drive our mission forward, we also value dinner with family, weekend time, and vacation time. We offer generous paid vacation and sick leave as well as family leave.
• We are collaborative and transparent – we consider ourselves a team, all moving with a common purpose. We are quick to cheer our successes, and even quicker to share and jointly problem solve our failures.
• We are in Seattle – and our office is on the water! We have mountains, we have lakes, we have four seasons, we bike to work, we have a vibrant theater scene, and we have so much else. We even have kayaks for you to paddle right outside our front door. We welcome interest from applicants from outside of the United States.
• We are friendly– chances are you will like every one of the 200+ (and growing) people who work here. We do. 

Ai2 is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. You may view the related Know Your Rights compliance poster and the Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination Provision by clicking on their corresponding links. 

This employer participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S. If E-Verify cannot confirm that you are authorized to work, this employer is required to give you written instructions and an opportunity to contact the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Social Security Administration (SSA) so you can begin to resolve the issue before the employer can take any action against you, including terminating your employment. Employers can only use E-Verify once you have accepted a job offer and completed the Form I-9.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to employees and applicants with disabilities to the full extent required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). If you feel you need a reasonable accommodation pursuant to the ADA, you are encouraged to contact us at recruiting@allenai.org.

Benefits:

• Team members and their families are covered by medical, dental, vision, basic life insurance, basic accidental death and dismemberment insurance, short-term disability, long-term disability, and an employee assistance program.
• Team members are able to enroll in our voluntary life insurance program, our voluntary accidental death and dismemberment program, 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.

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.