Research Product Manager, Fine-tuning

Lila Sciences Lila Sciences · AI Frontier · Alewife, Cambridge, MA +1 · Corporate Development

Product Manager role focused on fine-tuning AI models, defining training data, evals, and release criteria for model variants, and coordinating handoffs to other teams. The role acts as a structured input to the AI Research team's core model training.

What you'd actually do

  1. Own and maintain the prioritized backlog of training-capability packages (reinforcement-learning environments + SFT data), weighing Lila's TPPs, customer/commercial needs, and quarterly Lila model training needs
  2. Own the roadmap and delivery of fine-tuned Lila model variants for priority platform and commercial use cases: define the required training data, strategic data gaps, evals, and release criteria
  3. Coordinate the handoff of validated fine-tunes to the app and platform teams
  4. Serve as a structured input into the AI Research team's core-model training cadence, which sits outside this role's direct ownership
  5. Partner with AI Research (training-pipeline owners, evals, and data-mix leads) to translate prioritized capabilities into clear, well-specified requirements

Skills

Required

  • Product Management on ML/AI products
  • LLM training
  • fine-tuning
  • RL-based capability development
  • Owning delivery of model or product variants
  • Defining data, evals, and release criteria
  • Building and defending a prioritized backlog
  • Cross-functional collaboration with research organizations
  • Translating ambiguous priorities into deliverables

Nice to have

  • Familiarity with capability-based training approaches for LLMs (RL environments, SFT data generation, evals)
  • Partnering with ML/AI research teams on eval design and release criteria
  • Background in a scientific or technical domain relevant to Lila's mission

What the JD emphasized

  • Experience as a Product Manager on ML/AI products, ideally with exposure to LLM training, fine-tuning, or RL-based capability development
  • Experience owning delivery of a model or product variant for external or commercial customers, including defining data, evals, and release criteria
  • Track record translating ambiguous or evolving priorities into a clear, sequenced set of deliverables

Other signals

  • owns the roadmap and end-to-end delivery of fine-tuned Lila model variants
  • define the required training data, strategic data gaps, evals, and release criteria
  • coordinate the handoff of validated fine-tunes to the app and platform teams
  • serve as a structured input into the AI Research team's core-model training cadence
  • partner with AI Research to translate prioritized capabilities into clear, well-specified requirements
  • represent customer- and commercial-driven capability requests
  • integrate into AI Research sprint planning and standups
  • define and track release/acceptance criteria for new capabilities