Member of Technical Staff: Data Curriculum Lead
Walden Robotics · Cambridge, MA · 2 mo ago
EngineeringFull-time
About the Role
You will build the data curriculum—what data our models learn from, in what mix, and in what order—across pre-training and post-training. This is a senior individual contributor role at the heart of model quality, sitting between the data platform and the research teams, and one of our highest-leverage bets.
Responsibilities
- Curriculum Ownership: Build the data curriculum—sourcing, mixing, weighting, sequencing, converting—across pre- and post-training.
- Data-Centric Experiments: Run experiments that quantify how curriculum choices move model quality.
- Tooling: Build tooling that makes curriculum changes fast, measurable, and reproducible.
- Understanding Data: Develop an evidence-based understanding of which data helps, which hurts, and why.
- Cross-Team Influence: Partner across research and data teams and mentor on data-centric methodology.
Requirements
- Data-Centric ML: A track record of improving models through data rather than architecture alone.
- Experimental Rigor: Rigor in experimental design and in correctly attributing model changes to data changes.
- Influence: The ability to lead a cross-cutting work stream and influence multiple teams without owning them.
- Engineering: Sound skills to build the tooling your experiments depend on.
- Communication: Clear communication of results and their implications.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with large multimodal or VLA training data.
- Familiarity with data-mixture and scaling-law research.
- A history of data-centric wins on real models.
Benefits
- Competitive total compensation program, including salary, annual cash bonus, and company equity.
- Company-subsidized insurance programs.
- 401(k) with company match.
- Flexible PTO.
- Daily lunch.
- Other benefits.