Research Scientist - NLP

About the Role:
Grade Level (for internal use):
03
Are you looking to solve hard problems and enjoy working with teammates with diverse perspectives? If so, we would love to help you excel here at Kensho. We are a collaborative group of experienced Research Scientists and Machine Learning Engineers, whose academic backgrounds include doctorate degrees in NLP, theoretical physics, statistics, etc. We take pride in our team-based, tightly-knit startup-like Kenshin community, which fosters continuous learning and a communicative environment.
At Kensho, we hire talented people and give them the freedom, support, and resources needed to accomplish our shared goals. We believe in flexibility-first and give our employees the opportunity to work from where they feel most productive and engaged (must be in the United States). We also value in-person collaboration, so there may be times when travel to one of our Kensho hubs (e.g., Cambridge, MA or NYC) will be required for team meetings or company events.
About the R&D Lab:
Since 2022, we have been building a world-class R&D lab comprised of NLP Research Scientists, and we heavily prioritize publishing in top-tier conferences. Our small team has demonstrated compelling results and is fueling innovation throughout Kensho and S&P Global at large. Specifically, we are continuously developing Large Language Models (LLMs) and are actively working on long-context question-answering (QA), complex reasoning, tokenization, alignment (e.g., factuality), multi-document QA, and more!
Our small team has reserved access to hundreds of fast GPUs (A100s), spanning Cloud and on-prem machines.
Our current projects include:
- Long-context document QA, where the answer is contained within documents that are hundreds of pages in length
- Complex reasoning, including better understanding and improving models' ability to approximate numbers (related to commonsense reasoning).
- Creating rigorous evaluation benchmarks, spanning domain knowledge, quantity extraction, and program synthesis
- Improving existing alignment techniques for domain-specific needs, while also addressing factuality
- Dissecting tokenizers to better understand how each of the sub-components impact intrinsic and extrinsic performance
- Multi-Document QA where the answer requires combining information from dozens of sources.
- Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) methods
- Creating high-quality data filters for LLM development
Additionally, we maintain strong relationships with academia, including collaborating on several ongoing projects, providing industry grants, sponsoring conferences, and jointly holding faculty positions.
Kensho states that the anticipated base salary range for the position is 150k-225k. In addition, this role is eligible for an annual incentive bonus and equity plans. At Kensho, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their role and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case.
Technologies & Tools We Use:

• ML: PyTorch, Weights & Biases, NetworkX
• Deployment: Airflow, Docker, EC2, Kubernetes, AWS
• Datastores: Postgres, Elasticsearch, S3

What You'll Do:

• Regularly reading late-breaking research papers and helping to identify pertinent directions of work
• Developing novel, state-of-the-art NLP models that can scale to millions of documents
• Working closely with other Research Scientists and ML Engineers
• Writing clean, readable research code in PyTorch (not expected to write production-level code)
• Contribute to a stellar engineering culture that values excellent design, documentation, testing, and code
• Share your research results with your colleagues (presentations) and the world (published papers, patents, and blog posts)

What You'll Need:

• Outstanding people come from all different backgrounds, and we're always interested in meeting talented people! Therefore, we do not require any particular credential or experience. If our work seems exciting to you, and you feel that you could excel in this position, we'd love to hear from you. That said, most of our successful candidates possess the following, which reflects both our technical needs and team culture:
• Hold a PhD in Computer Science or related field (or a Master's with significant research experience)
• Have published in a top-tier ML/NLP conference (e.g., ACL, NAACL, EMNLP, NeurIPS, ICML)
• Are proficient in writing code in PyTorch, Tensorflow, or JAX
• Have experience with the techniques required to work effectively with large, messy real-world data
• Prefer to collaborate iteratively on hard problems with your teammates rather than spending stretches of time working alone and presenting your results intermittently
• Have a love for learning new skills and domains
• Are excited to share knowledge freely, proactively, and effectively with others who are interested
• Are a generous teammate who takes work seriously without taking yourself too seriously

What's In It For You?
Our Purpose:
Progress is not a self-starter. It requires a catalyst to be set in motion. Information, imagination, people, technology-the right combination can unlock possibility and change the world.
Our world is in transition and getting more complex by the day. We push past expected observations and seek out new levels of understanding so that we can help companies, governments and individuals make an impact on tomorrow. At S&P Global we transform data into Essential Intelligence®, pinpointing risks and opening possibilities. We Accelerate Progress.
Our People:
We're more than 35,000 strong worldwide-so we're able to understand nuances while having a broad perspective. Our team is driven by curiosity and a shared belief that Essential Intelligence can help build a more prosperous future for us all.
From finding new ways to measure sustainability to analyzing energy transition across the supply chain to building workflow solutions that make it easy to tap into insight and apply it. We are changing the way people see things and empowering them to make an impact on the world we live in. We're committed to a more equitable future and to helping our customers find new, sustainable ways of doing business. We're constantly seeking new solutions that have progress in mind. Join us and help create the critical insights that truly make a difference.
Our Values:
Integrity, Discovery, Partnership
At S&P Global, we focus on Powering Global Markets. Throughout our history, the world's leading organizations have relied on us for the Essential Intelligence they need to make confident decisions about the road ahead. We start with a foundation of integrity in all we do, bring a spirit of discovery to our work, and collaborate in close partnership with each other and our customers to achieve shared goals.
Benefits:
We take care of you, so you can take care of business. We care about our people. That's why we provide everything you-and your career-need to thrive at S&P Global.
Our benefits include:

• Health & Wellness: Health care coverage designed for the mind and body.
• Flexible Downtime: Generous time off helps keep you energized for your time on.
• Continuous Learning: Access a wealth of resources to grow your career and learn valuable new skills.
• Invest in Your Future: Secure your financial future through competitive pay, retirement planning, a continuing education program with a company-matched student loan contribution, and financial wellness programs.
• Family Friendly Perks: It's not just about you. S&P Global has perks for your partners and little ones, too, with some best-in class benefits for families.
• Beyond the Basics: From retail discounts to referral incentive awards-small perks can make a big difference.

For more information on benefits by country visit: https://spgbenefits.com/benefit-summaries
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at S&P Global:
At S&P Global, we believe diversity fuels creative insights, equity unlocks opportunity, and inclusion drives growth and innovation - Powering Global Markets. Our commitment centers on our global workforce, ensuring that our people are empowered to bring their whole selves to work. It doesn't stop there, we strive to better reflect and serve the communities in which we live and work, and advocate for greater opportunity for all.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Equal Opportunity Employer
S&P Global is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race/ethnicity, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, marital status, military veteran status, unemployment status, or any other status protected by law. Only electronic job submissions will be considered for employment.
If you need an accommodation during the application process due to a disability, please send an email to: [email protected] and your request will be forwarded to the appropriate person.
US Candidates Only: The EEO is the Law Poster http://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/posters/pdf/eeopost.pdf describes discrimination protections under federal law.
-----------------------------------------------------------
20 - Professional (EEO-2 Job Categories-United States of America), BSMGMT203 - Entry Professional (EEO Job Group)
Job ID: 307697
Posted On: 2024-10-01
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States