AfterQuery captures how experts reason and turns real-world professional work into high-quality training data for frontier foundation models. Backed by Y Combinator.
About the role
Your job is to prove that our data works. You will design and run training experiments that isolate the impact of our datasets on model behavior. This includes SFT and RL-based post-training, where you’ll measure how different data sources shift capability, generalization, and alignment. Working closely with partner labs, you will turn our datasets into clear, defensible evidence: this data → this improvement → under these conditions. This is experimental, high-leverage work.
What they're looking for
- Strong familiarity with LLM training and evaluation methodologies
- Ability to design lightweight experiments, move fast, and extract actionable insights from messy results
- Comfort working across domains (you'll touch finance, software engineering, policy, and more)
- A bias toward building over theorizing
- Great candidates are undergrad research or master's research (but haven't done a phd)
- Genuine obsession with how data structure, selection, and quality drive model behavior
More about this role
AfterQuery is an applied research lab curating data solutions for foundation model development. We serve every frontier AI lab with the mission of delivering the best data to power the best models. In doing so, we can make expertise that once took a lifetime to build available to anyone who needs it.
Our customers are the ones building the foundation models themselves and our work sits directly in the loop of how those systems improve. This is a rare opportunity to join a company at a defining moment in AI. Forbes reported that we could be YC's fastest unicorn, reportedly raising at a $3.2 billion valuation. We're based in San Francisco and backed by leading investors including Altos Ventures, BoxGroup, and Y Combinator and angels from Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta Superintelligence Labs, and Microsoft AI.
Massive Opportunity: Forbes reported that we could be YC's fastest unicorn, reportedly raising at a $3.2 billion valuation, and we're not slowing down.
Founding Impact: You will own and architect core infrastructure systems that power our platform from the ground up.
Equity & Growth: Competitive salary and meaningful equity. As we scale, you’ll have the opportunity to...
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