【Head of Research】Building 100B Domestic LLM from Scratch | Full Remote | JLPT N2 level

★Senior Forward Deployed Engineer (Generative AI / Client Implementation) | AI/NLP Company

• Business Level Japanese Required

◆ Flextime System & Fully Remote Work

◆ In-house Products

◆ 123 days off per year

◆ Annual salary: 12 million yen - 20 million yen

-------------【About the company】-------------

The company's mission is "to advance humanity by reinventing the mechanisms of value creation" and aims to create an environment where people can focus on creating new value through the use of natural language processing and AI technologies.

AI delivers information directly related to business operations, thereby enhancing the information sensitivity of the organization. In addition, the company offers two SaaS products: "Anews," which encourages the conception of business ideas and their development within the organization, and "Astrategy," a market research service that provides suggestions by structuring necessary information according to the organization and its operations.

Currently, its main target is major manufacturing R&D in Japan, and more than 30% of the Nikkei 225 companies have already adopted the system. In the future, starting with manufacturing R&D, the company plans to expand to domestic enterprise companies, then to Japanese companies as a whole, and even to global companies.

The company completed a Series C financing of 1.1 billion in August 2022.

In February 2024, they were selected for the "GENIAC (Generative AI Accelerator Challenge) Project" promoted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and NEDO, and have begun to develop their own LLM with 100 billion parameters!

The company has grown to 100 employees and is looking for more personnel to achieve further growth!

-------------【 Job Description】-------------

【Company Overview】

The company leverages cutting-edge Generative AI and Large Language Model (LLM) technology to drive corporate transformation.

Its primary strength lies in the technical capability to develop domestic LLMs from scratch. In May 2024, the company released a Japanese-specialized LLM with 100 billion parameters, making it one of the largest in Japan.

While many firms limit themselves to fine-tuning overseas models or utilizing open-source software (OSS), the company designs and builds its models from the ground up. The resulting performance is optimized for the Japanese language and business domains, boasting a standard that is among the highest for domestic models. Furthermore, it significantly reduces hallucinations and allows for safe operation under internal management.

Rather than being a mere "user of Generative AI," the company aims to be a "creator of AI," supporting Japan's industrial competitiveness through technology.

Leveraging this technical prowess, the company currently operates two main business lines: a SaaS business providing AI agents for the manufacturing industry, and a new PaaS business serving as a platform to support the implementation of operational AI.

Since its founding, the company has targeted enterprise clients and has already seen adoption by over 300 companies, including 30% of the Nikkei 225. Moving forward, the company plans to expand from manufacturing R&D to domestic enterprises, the broader Japanese market, and eventually global corporations.

In October 2024, the company completed a Series D funding round of 4.5 billion JPY, bringing its total funding to 8.8 billion JPY. With a workforce that has grown to approximately 150 employees, the company is now recruiting new talent to drive further growth.

【Current Challenges】

The Research Department at the company functions as an R&D organization dedicated to the AI domain, placing equal emphasis on both business contribution and research investment. Within this context, there is a growing need for greater sophistication and specialization in technical strategy and the overall management of the research organization across AI fields (including LLMs, Generative AI, RAG, and Knowledge Graphs).

To address this, we have established a new Head of Research position. The company is seeking a leader to specialized in spearheading AI technical strategy and guiding the research organization toward its next stage of evolution.

【Your Role】

You will be responsible for overseeing the technical strategy, research roadmap, and organizational development within the company's AI domains (LLMs, Generative AI, RAG, Knowledge Graphs, etc.).

■Responsibilities

・Technical Strategy for Short- to Long-Term Success: Selecting research themes and designing priority frameworks.

・Evolutionary Strategy for Proprietary LLMs: Driving the advancement of the company’s in-house large language models.

・Technical Integration: Bridging research breakthroughs with product development to ensure practical application.

・Organizational Excellence: Leading sophisticated recruitment and organizational development initiatives for the Research unit.

・Public Relations & Thought Leadership: Publishing articles and papers, and presenting at academic conferences in the fields of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Generative AI.

*Scope of changes in duties: Development-related tasks.

【Team Structure】

Research Division

・Knowledge Graph Team: 4 members

・VLM (Vision Language Model) Team: 4 members

*Currently, the Research Division is overseen directly by the CTO.

【Position Highlights】

・A Rare Opportunity to Evolve Proprietary LLMs from Scratch: Work in a unique environment where you can drive the development and evolution of in-house large language models from the ground up.

・Access to Cutting-Edge Infrastructure: Utilize a high-performance environment including large-scale GPU clusters and the latest technologies like NVIDIA NIM and NeMo.

・Lead Joint Research with Top-Tier Institutions: Spearhead collaborative research with Japan's leading research bodies, such as the Inui Laboratory at Tohoku University and AIST (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology), maintaining a position at the forefront of academic-industry partnership.

・Seamless Integration of R&D and Production: Experience the thrill of "research-to-implementation" where research breakthroughs are immediately applied to real-world social infrastructure.

・Leverage Massive Proprietary Data Assets: Exercise significant discretion in your research by utilizing a unique database of over 100 million news articles, user logs from 300 client companies, and an extensive proprietary Knowledge Graph.

-------------【 Requirements】-------------

【Required】

*Meet all of the following

・Advanced expertise in the field of natural language processing and generative AI

・Experience leading a research team

・Experience in the research, design, and improvement of large language models (LLMs) or large-scale models

【Preferred】

・Research experience with Japanese-specialized LLMs and RAG

・A track record of having papers accepted at peer-reviewed international conferences and in English-language academic journals

・Experience training models in large-scale GPU environments

【Ideal Applicants】

・Possesses an essential interest in technology and the determination to become a leading figure in the field.

・Capable of considering how to deliver value to customers and drive business growth while maintaining proactive communication with the business side.

・Enjoys following and verifying the latest theories by consistently engaging with and analyzing academic papers.

【Others】

・Able to reside in Japan

・Able to communicate fluently in Japanese, including on technical development matters

*Required level: Conversational

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【Working Time 】

Flextime System

【About remote work】

■Basically, fully remote work

Residence must be in Japan (no full remote work while residing overseas)

■Flexible remote/working options (no restrictions on the number of times you can come to the office)

Each employee works while using the system according to his/her own circumstances.

【Welfare】

■Customer facing allowance (flat monthly amount of 20,000 yen *included in monthly salary)

Free use for self-improvement and customer value improvement

(purchase of books/attendance at seminars/equipment, etc.)

■Lump-sum allowance for preparation for remote work (flat rate of 50,000 yen in the first paycheck)

Provided as an expense for preparation for remote work

【Others】

■Periodic health checkups (all paid by company)

■Influenza vaccination

■PC of your choice provided

■Free drinks such as water/coffee/carbonated drinks/alcohol provided at the office

■Office Glico installed

【Education and Skill Development】

■Onboarding for 5 days after employment is available

■Monthly study day system (for own skill improvement and learning purpose)

【Internal Communication】

■Weekly company-wide online meeting

■Monthly social gathering (offline, some online)

■Semi-annual kick-off (hybrid of online and offline meetings)

【Holidays】

■123 days off per year

■Saturdays, Sundays and national holidays (2 days off per week)

■Year-end and New Year vacations

■Paid leave (granted at the time of employment *Number of days granted depends on the month of employment)

■Prenatal leave

■Childcare leave