LLM Engineer; Early-Stage Startup
Position: LLM Engineer (Early-Stage Startup) Location: California Position Summary and Overview This role is for an "LLM Engineer" at an early‑stage startup, offering flexible remote work for 10–60 hours per week. Compensation ranges from $10 to $100 per hour. Key skills include PyTorch, LLM modification, and prior startup experience is preferred. Omnilow AI Ventures is seeking an LLM Engineer to help build an LLM that natively understands Omnilow, a novel algorithmic language that is as versatile as natural language. The LLM will be built by modifying an open‑source LLM so that it can read and write Omnilow. You will work directly with the founder, Samuel Sauer, and will be responsible for all technical work involved in building this LLM.
Responsibilities
- Evaluate and determine which open‑weight LLM to use as the initial base model.
- Handle all technical aspects of building this LLM end to end, including environment setup, model modification and training, evaluation, iteration, and preparing a finished, deployable model.
- Document all work clearly and reproducibly so that a technically competent outsider could independently reproduce the results, and so your documentation is suitable for patent and IP protection.
- Modify, fine‑tune, and evaluate open‑weight LLMs to reliably read and write Omnilow.
- Design and run experiments to measure correctness, consistency, and failure modes.
- Iterate on training approach, data strategy, prompting, and evaluation methodology.
- Investigate representation and tokenization trade‑offs for structured language behavior.
- Contribute to technical roadmap and prioritization in a high‑ambiguity startup environment.
Required Qualifications
- Must be fluent in English; the LLM will only be trained on Omnilow using American English.
- Strong technical judgment and independence.
- Clear written communication and comfort working asynchronously.
- Upholds high ethical standards and acts with integrity in all technical and professional decisions.
- Willing to complete background checks and sign confidentiality and intellectual property assignment contracts.
- Able to receive direct, candid feedback and act on it while collaborating effectively with others.
- Availability to perform each function listed in the Responsibilities section.
- Own equipment (workspace, capable PC or laptop, necessary software) to perform all responsibilities. Operational costs such as cloud compute will not be expected from the candidate.
Preferred Qualifications
- Proven experience taking an open‑weight LLM and modifying its weights through fine‑tuning or other techniques to produce a finished, deployable model.
- Ability and experience shipping experiments end‑to‑end (data, training, evaluation, analysis).
- Live in the United States; fluent in written American English.
- Experience enabling users to pay to use a finished LLM through an API.
- Experience working with complex parenthetical or bracket structures in structured, natural‑language‑like text (Notepad++ or similar).
- Prior early‑stage startup experience.
- Strong PyTorch skills and practical transformer experience.
- Interest in language design, structured representations, or reasoning systems.
Compensation
Compensation may include cash, equity, or a combination, depending on role scope and mutual fit. If cash is used, hourly rates may be up to $100 per hour for the right candidate; most cases will be below $50 per hour. Equity opportunities may be available for long‑term contributors. Location and Work Hours Remote—worldwide applicants welcome. Flexible time commitment of 10–60 hours per week. Job Types Full‑time, Part‑time, Contract, Temporary. Apply Apply via external form: Learn more at , the main webpage for Omnilow AI Ventures. #J-18808-Ljbffr Apply tot his job Apply To this Job