← All roles

Research Engineer, Developer Experience, Tinker

Thinking Machines Lab· Core Engineering, Product, and Infrastructure
Apply on company site
San Francisco, CA$350k - $475kPosted 5mo ago

About the role

Research engineer focused on developer experience to build Tinker, a fine-tuning API, by working with real users, writing recipes, and shaping product improvements.

Responsibilities

  • Write, test, and maintain high-quality code examples, recipes, and documentation in the Tinker cookbook.
  • Work directly with a variety of users to debug technical issues and optimize their fine-tuning pipelines.
  • Partner with internal research and infra teams to identify and prioritize improvements to Tinker’s developer experience.
  • Build tools, integrations, and demos that reduce user friction and make it easy to experiment and deploy models.
  • Share insights from the field through posts, guides, and talks.
  • Help develop Tinker’s near-term roadmap and long-term product strategy.

Qualifications

  • Experienced with fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) with supervised and reinforcement learning, and how to tune the hyperparameters of these algorithms.
  • Experienced with developing software libraries, especially open-source libraries.
  • Thoughtful about developer experience, with clear ideas around developer ergonomics, onboarding flow, and sharp edges.
  • Passionate about engaging with open-source communities, whether by contributing code, answering questions, or sharing learnings.
  • Have written public or internal code examples, tutorials, or papers that helped others understand and apply technical concepts.
  • Comfortable reasoning about model training, fine-tuning, and inference, and can credibly discuss tradeoffs between different approaches.

Skills

Required:Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs)Software library developmentDeveloper experience / onboarding design
Nice to have:Open-source community engagement

Benefits

  • generous health, dental, and vision benefits
  • unlimited PTO
  • paid parental leave
  • relocation support as needed
Last updated Jul 22, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
Thinking Machines Lab logo

About Thinking Machines Lab

Connectionism: Research Blog by Thinking Machines Lab

Thinking Machines Lab is an artificial intelligence research and product company. We’re building a future where everyone has access to the knowledge and tools to make AI work for their unique needs and goals.

AIartificial intelligencebessemer-ai-infrastructure-2026deep learningliquid-ai-recruiting-targetmachine learningproductreinforcement-learning-platforms
Company profileWebsite

More open roles at Thinking Machines Lab