Applied Machine Learning Researcher at phonely

Department: Engineering

Setup: Remote - Australia
Type: Full-time
Level: not_specified
Posted: Jul 15, 2026

Description

Phonely is hiring an Applied Machine Learning Researcher to improve conversational voice AI agents by fine-tuning and evaluating language models, analyzing production conversations, curating and generating training data, and deploying research improvements. The role is hands-on research and engineering, requires strong Python and machine-learning experience, and is remote, preferably based in Australia.

Required Skills

Machine learning
Model fine-tuning
Python
Model evaluation
Experimental design
Data curation
RLHF

Additional Information

Required Previous Experiences: Experience with machine learning and modern language models
Experience fine-tuning, evaluating, or adapting language models
Experience building or improving AI model evaluation systems
Experience with SFT, preference tuning, DPO, RFT, GRPO, RLHF, LoRA, or QLoRA
Experience with synthetic data generation and data quality pipelines
Experience working in a startup or fast-moving product environment
Preferred Qualifications: PhD in machine learning, NLP, or a related field
Experience with conversational AI, voice AI, or customer-support automation
Familiarity with model serving, inference optimization, or vLLM
Experience working in a startup or fast-moving product environment