Senior LLM Engineer, R&D
About The Position
The New York Times Research & Development team explores how emerging technologies can advance journalism and the company’s commercial and strategic goals. The team collaborates with designers, developers, reporters, photographers, and editors to create new forms of storytelling, from prototypes through publication. The Senior LLM Engineer will develop applications using large language models in support of The Times’ mission and journalistic standards. The role reports to the Executive Director of R&D and is a temporary position expected to last through November 2027. The position is hybrid, as indicated by the job listing tag. Applicants are asked to provide work samples relevant to the position and explain how they reflect their approach to software engineering.
Requirements
- At least 5 years of professional software development experience or equivalent experience.
- Proficiency with Python and TypeScript or JavaScript.
- Professional experience architecting and shipping applications that use LLMs, including multi-step chaining and human-in-the-loop workflows.
- Strong understanding of LLM evaluations and experience refining products using instrumentation, monitoring, and golden datasets to ensure accuracy and robustness.
- Experience in algorithmic and AI text processing, such as text segmentation, semantic chunking, and restructuring.
- Ability to build projects independently and collaborate with a larger team.
- Curiosity about and skepticism toward new technologies, with an emphasis on applying tools to solve meaningful problems for users.
- Care for software craftsmanship, capturing patterns, and supporting future development.
- Commitment to journalistic independence and The New York Times’ mission.
Nice To Haves
- Experience building reliable, scalable back-end services in cloud environments such as GCP or AWS.
- Familiarity with AI orchestration and evaluation frameworks such as AWS Step Functions, Google Cloud Workflows, Dagster, or Braintrust.
- Experience building front-end user interfaces for LLM-backed products.
Responsibilities
- Design and implement LLM-backed APIs, improving outcomes through evaluation, grounding, and fine-tuning practices.
- Deploy reliable services in cloud environments such as GCP or AWS to support high-traffic LLM applications.
- Move features from experimental prototypes to stable production systems in a fast-paced environment with evolving requirements.
- Collaborate with designers, product managers, and stakeholders to translate requirements into technical tasks, estimates, and progress updates.
- Maintain documentation to support feature handoff and future maintenance.
- Stay informed about developments in AI and LLMs and advocate for relevant technologies and best practices.
- Demonstrate understanding of journalistic independence and commitment to The Times’ mission.
Benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision benefits may be available depending on role and location.
- Flexible Spending Accounts (F.S.A.s) may be available depending on role and location.
- Company-matching 401(k) plan may be available depending on role and location.
- Employee stock purchase plan may be available depending on role and location.
- Paid vacation and paid sick days may be available depending on role and location.
- Paid parental leave may be available depending on role and location.
- Tuition reimbursement and professional development programs may be available depending on role and location.
- Variable pay, such as an annual bonus and restricted stock, may be available depending on role.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
