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Machine Learning Engineer — Distillation

Remote (world)

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Employment type: Full-time
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Department: Research
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Apply at Featherless AI

What you’ll work on

Full posting

We’re looking for a Machine Learning Engineer focused on model distillation to help us build smaller, faster, and more efficient models without sacrificing quality.

This is a hands-on role with real ownership: you’ll design distillation pipelines, run large-scale experiments, and ship models used in production.

  • You’ll work at the intersection of research and production—taking cutting-edge techniques and turning them into systems that scale.

  • Design and implement knowledge distillation pipelines (teacher–student, self-distillation, multi-teacher, etc.)

  • Work on core model quality and cost efficiency—not side projects

From the employer’s posting
We’re looking for a Machine Learning Engineer focused on model distillation to help us build smaller, faster, and more efficient models without sacrificing quality. You’ll work at the intersection of research and production—taking cutting-edge techniques and turning them into systems that scale.
This is a hands-on role with real ownership: you’ll design distillation pipelines, run large-scale experiments, and ship models used in production.
About the Role We’re looking for a Machine Learning Engineer focused on model distillation to help us build smaller, faster, and more efficient models without sacrificing quality. You’ll work at the intersection of research and production—taking cutting-edge techniques and turning them into systems that scale. This is a hands-on role with real ownership: you’ll design distillation pipelines, run large-scale experiments, and ship models used in production.
What You’ll Do Design and implement knowledge distillation pipelines (teacher–student, self-distillation, multi-teacher, etc.) Distill large foundation models into smaller, faster, and cheaper models for inference
Why Join Work on core model quality and cost efficiency—not side projects High ownership and direct impact on product and roadmap

Tools in this posting

  • PyTorch
Source — Tool mentions in context
- Solid understanding of training dynamics, loss functions, and optimization - Experience with PyTorch (or JAX) and modern ML tooling - Comfort running experiments on multi-GPU or distributed setups

Job description

View original posting ↗

About the Role

We’re looking for a Machine Learning Engineer focused on model distillation to help us build smaller, faster, and more efficient models without sacrificing quality. You’ll work at the intersection of research and production—taking cutting-edge techniques and turning them into systems that scale.

This is a hands-on role with real ownership: you’ll design distillation pipelines, run large-scale experiments, and ship models used in production.

What You’ll Do

  • Design and implement knowledge distillation pipelines (teacher–student, self-distillation, multi-teacher, etc.)

  • Distill large foundation models into smaller, faster, and cheaper models for inference

  • Run and analyze large-scale training experiments to evaluate quality, latency, and cost tradeoffs

  • Collaborate with research to translate new distillation ideas into production-ready code

  • Optimize training and inference performance (memory, throughput, latency)

  • Contribute to internal tooling, evaluation frameworks, and experiment tracking

  • (Optional) Contribute back to open-source models, tooling, or research

What We’re Looking For

  • Strong background in machine learning or deep learning

  • Hands-on experience with model distillation (LLMs or other neural networks)

  • Solid understanding of training dynamics, loss functions, and optimization

  • Experience with PyTorch (or JAX) and modern ML tooling

  • Comfort running experiments on multi-GPU or distributed setups

  • Ability to reason about model quality vs. performance tradeoffs

  • Pragmatic mindset: you care about shipping, not just papers

Nice to Have

  • Experience distilling LLMs or large sequence models

  • Experience with inference optimization (quantization, pruning, kernels, etc.)

  • Familiarity with evaluation for language models

  • Open-source contributions or research publications

  • Experience in early-stage or fast-moving startups

Why Join

  • Work on core model quality and cost efficiency—not side projects

  • High ownership and direct impact on product and roadmap

  • Small, senior team with strong research + engineering culture

  • Competitive compensation + meaningful equity

  • Remote-friendly, async-first environment

Your next step

  • Have your CV and examples of relevant work ready.
  • Check the listed location, eligibility and core experience before starting.
  • Ask the employer about the salary range before committing time to the process.

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Source & posting history

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Location & working pattern

Remote (world)

- Competitive compensation + meaningful equity - Remote-friendly, async-first environment
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Status in our records
Active
First seen by us
Jun 2, 2026
Recorded sightings
59
Last seen by us
Sep 26, 2026
Employer says posted
Jan 22, 2026

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