AI R&D Engineer – Model Training (f/m/d)

• At its core, you need to be able to dive into a codebase, change the behavior as necessary, and after the change the code should be better tested and easier to understand than before.
• As such we look for candidates for an understanding of how to design for low coupling and high cohesion paired with the ability to incrementally refactor.
• Experience with the following technologies is likely to be helpful:
• Test Driven Development (TDD)
• Trunk based development
• Continuous integration
• Domain Driven Design

• Most of our code is in Python, there is also the occasional Rust codebase.
• Large parts of our training pipeline are built on top of Kubernetes.
• We do not hire for skills in a particular technology or language, but rather ability to learn and mindset, yet experience with these technologies is a plus.

At Aleph Alpha, we foster a culture built on ownership, autonomy, and empowerment. Teams and individual contributors are trusted to take responsibility for their work and drive meaningful impact. We maintain a flat organizational structure with efficient, supportive management that enables quick decision-making, open communication, and a strong sense of shared purpose.

We believe a strong engineering culture is the key to model training success. We like Extreme Programming and favor trunk-based development. We often mob-program, which keeps us aligned and means we always learn from each other.

• Become part of an AI revolution!
• 30 days of paid vacation
• Access to a variety of fitness & wellness offerings via Wellhub https://wellhub.com/de-de/
• Mental health support through nilo.health http://nilo.health/
• Substantially subsidized company pension plan for your future security
• Subsidized Germany-wide transportation ticket
• Budget for additional technical equipment
• Flexible working hours for better work-life balance and hybrid working model
• JobRad® https://www.jobrad.org/ Bike Lease

Note: We welcome applicants at every stage of their career. Your drive and willingness to learn are far more important to us than strict experience requirements.

Aleph Alpha is one of the few companies in Europe doing serious foundation model pre-training like our recently released Kolibri-1 model https://huggingface.co/Aleph-Alpha/Kolibri-1. Our customers - in finance, manufacturing, public administration - need models that understand German, meet European regulatory requirements, and work reliably in high-stakes settings. We're building that in Heidelberg.