[Remote] Student Researcher [Seed LLM Post Training – Reward Modeling] - 2026 Start (PhD)

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. ByteDance is dedicated to pioneering advanced AI foundation models and is seeking a Student Researcher for their Seed LLM Post Training team. The role involves researching and developing reward models, enhancing controllability and instruction-following performance, and contributing to data selection and synthesis pipelines. Responsibilities Design and train reward models that reflect nuanced human preferences in LLM outputs Develop and evaluate components of a Reward Model System that integrates model predictions, verifier feedback, tool usage, and agent signals to produce reliable, generalizable reward estimates Develop reward models to enhance controllability and instruction-following performance, especially in scenarios involving complex, multi-part user requests Contribute to data selection and synthesis pipelines that improve post-training data quality, leveraging reward signals to expand the model's capabilities Research scalable methods for learning from pairwise comparisons, rankings, or human demonstrations across diverse tasks Skills Currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related technical field First-author publications in top-tier venues (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP) Research experience in reward modeling, human preference learning, or LLM post-training Proficient in Python and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or JAX Must obtain work authorization in the country of employment at the time of hire, and maintain ongoing work authorization during employment Experience with RLHF, DPO, rejection sampling, or ranking-based supervision methods Familiarity with model-based reward composition, verifier integration, or synthetic data pipelines Understanding of how reward models interact with large-scale RL and agent systems Benefits Interns have day one access to health insurance Life insurance Wellbeing benefits 10 paid holidays per year Paid sick time (56 hours if hired in first half of year, 40 if hired in second half of year) Housing allowance Company Overview ByteDance is a technology company that develops content creation platforms and services. It was founded in 2012, and is headquartered in Beijing, Beijing, CHN, with a workforce of 10001+ employees. Its website is Company H1B Sponsorship ByteDance has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships, with 1350 in 2025, 1123 in 2024, 775 in 2023, 487 in 2022, 417 in 2021, 245 in 2020. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role.