Featherless AI · 23 hours ago
AI Researcher — Distillation
FeatherlessAI is seeking an AI Researcher focused on model distillation to advance efficient, high-performance models. The role involves designing and evaluating distillation techniques, running large-scale experiments, and collaborating with engineers to productionize research outcomes while also publishing research papers.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)Cloud ComputingDatabase
Responsibilities
Design and evaluate model distillation techniques (teacher–student training, self-distillation, layer-wise distillation, representation matching, etc.)
Research tradeoffs between model size, latency, memory, and accuracy
Develop novel distillation approaches for:
Large language models
Long-context or specialized architectures
Inference-constrained environments
Run large-scale experiments and ablations; analyze results rigorously
Collaborate with engineers to productionize research outcomes
Write and submit research papers to top-tier venues (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, COLM, etc.)
Contribute to internal research notes, technical blogs, and open-source projects when appropriate
Qualification
Required
Strong background in machine learning research
Hands-on experience with model distillation or closely related topics (compression, pruning, quantization, representation learning)
Publication experience (conference or journal papers, workshop papers, or arXiv preprints)
Solid understanding of deep learning fundamentals (optimization, training dynamics, generalization)
Fluency in PyTorch (or equivalent) and research-grade experimentation
Ability to clearly communicate research ideas, results, and limitations
Preferred
Experience distilling large language models
Work on efficiency-focused research (latency, memory, throughput)
Experience with long-context models or non-Transformer architectures
Open-source contributions in ML or research tooling
Prior startup or applied research experience
Company
Featherless AI
We enable serverless inference via our GPU orchestration and model load-balancing system.
H1B Sponsorship
Featherless AI 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
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (1)
Funding
Current Stage
Early StageTotal Funding
$5MKey Investors
Airbus Ventures
2025-10-31Series A
2025-03-17Seed· $5M
Company data provided by crunchbase