Research Intern

Compresr · San Francisco, CA

  • Internship

About the role

**Duration** 3 months, with a possibility of a full-time job afterwards

**Start date** Immediately

**About us** We're building state-of-the-art context compression. Our mission is to become the "Cloudflare for LLMs", a compression layer embedded into most LLM pipelines by default. We're a team of ex-EPFL MSc/PhDs. We started by publishing papers, then got into YC and started making money helping companies cut their LLM costs. We run the business like a research lab: form hypotheses, kill the ones that don't work, double down on the ones that do.

**What we offer** - Competitive compensation - All the resources you need: GPUs, subscriptions, OpenAI/Anthropic credits - As much responsibility as you can handle. Our goal is to make you an irreplaceable part of the team - A fast-paced environment where you'll learn much faster than usual, surrounded by technical people who push each other - Possibility of a full-time offer based on performance

**What we can't offer** - Hands-on supervision. We're around for brainstorming and high-level guidance, but you own your work and will be the person who knows it best. - A well-defined project. We're early-stage and led by customer and market pull, so we work on several directions at once. You'll navigate this alongside the rest of us. - Training wheels. After a short onboarding, you'll work on hard, customer-facing, time-sensitive problems like everyone else. - Not a typical internship. We're running a tight ship on a rough sea. Not for everyone, but you'll come out the other side a much stronger sailor.

**About you** - You love research, read papers and hack on new repos for fun - Comfortable training ML models/transformers and doing independent applied research - Excellent Claude Code (or similar) user - Highly ambitious, ready for high-intensity YC startup culture, self-motivated - Strong communicator, fast response time, team player

**Preferred** - LLM research experience, shown through publications, open-source contributions, or personal projects - BSc or MSc in CS/DS, math, or physics. - Startup or research internship experience (industry or academic)

**Interview process** - A 40-minute call: 20 minutes for introductions and motivations, followed by 20 minutes of technical questions (mostly ML/LLM foundational questions) - A paid take-home project designed to take around 6 hours, followed by a 30-minute call to walk us through your work and answer a few questions - A 30-minute culture interview with the whole team

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