Research Program Manager, Pre-training (AI)

Location: San Francisco, CA, United States. Workplace type: Onsite.

Company

hirify.global is a research lab building open foundational models to make intelligence accessible, customizable, and open to everyone.

What you will do

• Embed with pre-training ML and Data teams to understand the technical landscape, build trust, and identify high-impact program and process improvements.
• Drive complex, cross-team research initiatives spanning data, model architecture, training runs, and evaluation without established playbooks.
• Coordinate experiment prioritization, run scheduling, data readiness, and checkpoint handoffs to downstream teams.
• Analyze technical tradeoffs and provide clear, actionable recommendations to research leadership.
• Build lightweight systems for handoffs, configuration management, research milestones, and operational coordination.
• Connect pre-training, mid-training, post-training, and infrastructure teams so upstream decisions propagate cleanly.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in technical program management, research operations, or ML engineering, including building programs from scratch in research- or ML-heavy environments.
• Technical depth to engage with model architecture, scaling laws, data processing pipelines, training dynamics, and optimizer behavior, follow experimental reasoning, and identify risks early.
• Experience embedding within technical teams and earning trust through competence, reliability, and genuine curiosity.
• Resourcefulness and high agency in ambiguous, fast-changing environments.
• Strong stakeholder management skills and the ability to influence senior technical staff through delivery and informed judgment.
• Comfort working in high-stakes environments where decisions affect model quality, compute spend, and training timelines measured in weeks or months.
• Motivation to build research program management practices from zero to one in a small, fast-moving team.

Culture & Benefits

• Talent-dense, ground-up environment focused on open foundational models and high-impact work.
• Salary and equity structured to recognize and retain talent globally; stock options for contributors.
• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and life insurance with an annual wellness allowance.
• Lunch and dinner provided daily in the office.
• 22 weeks of paid parental leave for all new birthing and non-birthing parents, including adoptive and surrogate journeys.
• Unlimited paid time off in the U.S., 30 days in the U.K., regular off-sites, happy hours, and team celebrations. Visa sponsorship and long-term immigration support are available where applicable.

Hiring process

• Employment may be conditioned on compliance with U.S. export control requirements and government authorization to access restricted technology or source code.
• Reasonable accommodations are available throughout the hiring process.