Research Scientist - NLP

$20,000 - $225,000/Yr

Kensho Technologies - Cambridge, MA

Full-time - Entry Level

Cambridge, MA

101-250 employees

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

About the position

Kensho is seeking a Research Scientist specializing in Natural Language Processing (NLP) to join our innovative team. As a part of a 120-person company, which operates independently under S&P Global, you will be at the forefront of developing cutting-edge solutions that address the challenges faced by some of the largest businesses and institutions. Our focus is on leveraging messy data to extract valuable insights, and we are particularly interested in candidates who are passionate about solving complex problems in NLP. The role involves working collaboratively with a team of experienced Research Scientists and Machine Learning Engineers, many of whom hold doctorate degrees in relevant fields such as NLP, theoretical physics, and statistics. We pride ourselves on fostering a tightly-knit community that encourages continuous learning and open communication. In our R&D lab, established in 2022, we prioritize publishing in top-tier conferences and are actively engaged in developing Large Language Models (LLMs). Our projects include long-context question-answering, complex reasoning, and improving alignment techniques for domain-specific needs. You will have access to advanced computational resources, including hundreds of fast GPUs, to support your research endeavors. The position requires you to stay updated with the latest research, develop novel NLP models, and contribute to a culture that values excellent design, documentation, and testing. You will also have opportunities to share your findings through presentations and publications. Kensho offers a flexible work environment, allowing employees to work from locations where they feel most productive, while also valuing in-person collaboration for team meetings and events. The anticipated base salary for this position ranges from $150,000 to $225,000, with additional incentives such as annual bonuses and equity plans. We are looking for individuals who are not only technically skilled but also enthusiastic about collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Responsibilities

• Regularly read late-breaking research papers and identify pertinent directions of work.
• Develop novel, state-of-the-art NLP models that can scale to millions of documents.
• Work closely with other Research Scientists and ML Engineers.
• Write clean, readable research code in PyTorch (not expected to write production-level code).
• Contribute to a stellar engineering culture that values excellent design, documentation, testing, and code.
• Share research results with colleagues and the world through presentations, published papers, patents, and blog posts.

Requirements

• Hold a PhD in Computer Science or related field (or a Master's with significant research experience).
• Have published in a top-tier ML/NLP conference (e.g., ACL, NAACL, EMNLP, NeurIPS, ICML).
• Proficient in writing code in PyTorch, Tensorflow, or JAX.
• Experience with techniques required to work effectively with large, messy real-world data.
• Prefer to collaborate iteratively on hard problems with teammates rather than working alone.
• A love for learning new skills and domains.
• Excited to share knowledge freely and effectively with others.
• A generous teammate who takes work seriously without taking yourself too seriously.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) methods.
• Familiarity with creating rigorous evaluation benchmarks.
• Knowledge of tokenization techniques and their impact on model performance.

Benefits

• Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance with 100% company paid premiums.
• Unlimited Paid Time Off.
• 26 weeks of 100% paid Parental Leave (paternity and maternity).
• 401(k) plan with 6% employer matching.
• Generous company matching on donations to non-profit charities.
• Up to $20,000 tuition assistance toward degree programs, plus up to $4,000/year for ongoing professional education.
• Plentiful snacks, drinks, and regularly catered lunches.
• Dog-friendly office (CAM office).
• Bike sharing program memberships.
• Compassion leave and elder care leave.
• Mentoring and additional learning opportunities.
• Opportunity to expand professional network and participate in conferences and events.