Machine Learning Researcher, Multimodal LLMs

About the role

We are looking for someone to contribute to the development of our next-generation multimodal LLM stack, combining speech, text, tools, and real-time reasoning into a single unified system. You’ll be responsible for building industry-leading conversational AI models that power Bland's agent, and taking them all the way from idea to production.

Responsibilities

• Define how our agents listen, think, and act in real time, integrating streaming audio, tool execution, and dynamic context into a single coherent system.
• Take ideas from research through production systems serving millions of calls per day.

Requirements

• Strong LLM / Multimodal Background
• Experience with LLMs, multimodal models, or speech-language systems
• Deep understanding of prompting, fine-tuning, and alignment techniques
• Familiarity with neural audio codecs and modern multimodal LLM techniques
• Fast Experimental Loop
• Can go from idea → dataset → experiment → conclusion in days
• Know how to design experiments that actually answer the question
• Product Intuition
• Strong sense for what makes an interaction feel natural vs robotic
• Ability to translate abstract modeling ideas into user-facing improvements
• Builder Mentality
• Take ownership from research through deployment
• Thrive in ambiguous, fast-moving environments
• Care about impact, not just elegance

Qualifications

• You think in systems, not just models
• Obsess over latency, correctness, and real-world behavior
• Are comfortable discarding ideas quickly when data disagrees
• Push toward simple abstractions for complex problems

Skills

• Experience with real-time voice systems or conversational AI
• Background in tool-using agents or agent frameworks
• Experience with multimodal datasets (audio + text + actions)
• Contributions to LLM or speech-related research or open source

Benefits

• Competitive salary: $180,000 – $260,000
• Meaningful equity
• Full healthcare, dental, vision
• Office in Jackson Square, SF
• High autonomy, high impact

Pay

• Compensation Range: $140K - $250K