ML Developer (Kyrgyzstan)

Smart devices with Alice

hybrid

office

Yandex Kyrgyzstan is seeking an ML developer for our LLM team building language models for Alice, with a focus on prompt interpretation, VA personality, and speech recognition/synthesis tech.

We are a small but savvy team developing a bilingual (Arabic/English) language model that enables users to seamlessly switch between languages while interacting with our voice assistant, helping them with their day-to-day needs: putting on music, setting alarms and reminders, checking the weather, controlling smart home devices, or looking something up. We then leverage this experience in our new projects focused on LLM data generation and automated QA. This is a hybrid position where you'll oversee the project's LLM core, from data preparation and model training to evaluation and deployment. The role spans the entire production cycle, giving you the opportunity to influence technical decisions from the outset. Yandex Kyrgyzstan is part of Yango Group, a global technology ecosystem building digital services that simplify and enhance daily life. Operating in more than 30 countries across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America, we deliver solutions in ride-hailing, delivery, e-commerce, mapping, entertainment, AI, and beyond. Headquartered in Dubai, Yango Group unites advanced technological capabilities with deep local market knowledge to create products that fit naturally into people's daily routines across diverse communities.

You will be responsible for

• Fine-tuning language models (SFT, DPO, Reinforcement Learning) • Configuring system prompts and influencing the language model's behavior • Generating prompts and multi-step conversations, improving our existing corpora, and filtering examples using language models • Comparing automated scoring (LLM-as-a-Judge) with expert annotation • Teaching the model to use the correct functions given the context, ask clarifying questions, and correctly interpret numbers, dates, names, and locations • Developing benchmarks for conversations and commands • Ensuring that the language model functions correctly as a whole (language authenticity, context memory, personality, AI safety) • Integrating models into the product infrastructure, optimizing response times and inference • Contributing to the development process from closed beta to post-launch

You might be a fit if you have

• Good knowledge of Python, with experience in developing ML/NLP systems and working with PyTorch • A solid idea of how transformers and LLMs work under the hood • Hands-on experience with fine-tuning language models using SFT, DPO, or RL (production, research, or a compelling pet project) • An understanding of QA processes: creating test datasets, analyzing data slices, using LLM judges, and running A/B tests • An independent mindset and the willingness to understand a complex system and drive results, keeping in close contact with editors and adjacent teams It’s a plus if you • Have experience with multi-language models, synthetic data, and enhancing models by improving training datasets • Know about tool calling, agent architectures, and RAG • Are familiar with LLM inference (vLLM and alternatives, distributed training) • Speak English at a level sufficient for understanding technical literature and articles

Explore our benefits

Life in balance with Yango
We know how to work hard, but we also know how to have fun together, and we are true believers that the wellbeing of our teams is important
Psychological support
Available in different languages to support you when you need it most
Life and private health cover
Life and private health insurance

*different conditions apply based on hiring location and position type

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