ByteDance · 1 week ago
Student Researcher [Seed LLM Post Training – Reward Modeling] - 2026 Start (PhD)
United States
Internship
Remote
Intern
$65/hr - $65/hrByteDance is dedicated to pioneering advanced AI foundation models and is seeking a Student Researcher for their Seed LLM Post Training team. The role involves researching and developing reward models, enhancing controllability and instruction-following performance, and contributing to data selection and synthesis pipelines.
ContentData MiningFoundational AIInternetSocial Media
Responsibilities
Design and train reward models that reflect nuanced human preferences in LLM outputs
Develop and evaluate components of a Reward Model System that integrates model predictions, verifier feedback, tool usage, and agent signals to produce reliable, generalizable reward estimates
Develop reward models to enhance controllability and instruction-following performance, especially in scenarios involving complex, multi-part user requests
Contribute to data selection and synthesis pipelines that improve post-training data quality, leveraging reward signals to expand the model's capabilities
Research scalable methods for learning from pairwise comparisons, rankings, or human demonstrations across diverse tasks
Qualification
Required
Currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related technical field
First-author publications in top-tier venues (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP)
Research experience in reward modeling, human preference learning, or LLM post-training
Proficient in Python and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or JAX
Must obtain work authorization in the country of employment at the time of hire, and maintain ongoing work authorization during employment
Preferred
Experience with RLHF, DPO, rejection sampling, or ranking-based supervision methods
Familiarity with model-based reward composition, verifier integration, or synthetic data pipelines
Understanding of how reward models interact with large-scale RL and agent systems
Benefits
Interns have day one access to health insurance
Life insurance
Wellbeing benefits
10 paid holidays per year
Paid sick time (56 hours if hired in first half of year, 40 if hired in second half of year)
Housing allowance
Company
ByteDance
ByteDance is a technology company that develops content creation platforms and services.
Founded in 2012
10001+ employees
H1B Sponsorship
ByteDance has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
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Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (1350)
2024 (1123)
2023 (775)
2022 (487)
2021 (417)
2020 (245)
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageTotal Funding
$9.8BKey Investors
Capital TodayG42Tiger Global Management
2025-11-20Secondary Market· $300M
2024-07-25Secondary Market
2023-03-14Secondary Market· $100M
Leadership Team
Jochen Bischoff
Head of Global Business Solutions - Africa
Matty Lin
General Manager, Global Business Solutions, KR
Recent News
2026-01-07
South China Morning Post
2026-01-07
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