Merge pull request #77 from plastic-labs/job_postings_v1

first draft, still have todos

content/_index.md

@@ -1,7 +1,11 @@
 ---
 title: Home
 enableToc: false
+description: Welcome to our collaborative second brain.
 ---
+> [!custom] PLASTIC IS HIRING!
+> Check out our [[Work at Plastic|open positions here]].
+
 Welcome to our collaborative second brain. 
 
 Here you'll find our blog, research, and public notes. You can also [engage with the ideas directly](https://github.com/plastic-labs/blog) on GitHub.
@@ -15,9 +19,10 @@ It’s our mission to realize this future.
 We post a few different types of content here:
 
 - [[blog | Blog]] -- Deep dives into the philosophy, cognitive science, & machine learning underpinning our projects
+- [[careers | Careers]] -- Open positions at Plastic Labs
 - [[notes | Evergreen Notes]] -- Short form working notes on Plastic theses
-- [[extrusions | Extrusions]] -- Brief, densely-linked reflections synthesizing last month's conceptual work
-- [[releases | Release Notes]] -- Weekly changelogs & details on new product features  
+- [[extrusions | Extrusions]] -- Brief, densely-linked reflections synthesizing recent conceptual work
+- [[releases | Release Notes]] -- Changelogs & details on new product features  
 - [[research | Research]] -- Formal published, preprint, or blog-style company research we've made public
 
 *Extrusions and Release Notes are also available as email newsletters:*
@@ -29,5 +34,5 @@ We post a few different types of content here:
 If you find the content here compelling, explore our active projects:
 
 - [Honcho](https://honcho.dev) — A personalization platform for AI-powered applications, currently in [private beta](https://plasticlabs.typeform.com/honchobeta)  
-- [Yousim](https://yousim.ai) -- An open-ended, CLI game that allows you to simulate any identity
+- [YouSim](https://yousim.ai) -- An open-ended, CLI game that allows you to simulate any identity ([now open source](https://github.com/plastic-labs/yousim))
 - [Bloom](https://bloombot.ai) — A theory of mind-powered AI learning companion, open sourced as [Tutor-GPT](https://github.com/plastic-labs/tutor-gpt) (slated for relaunch soon...)  

content/careers/Design Contractor.md

@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+---
+title: Design Contractor
+date: 08.23.24
+tags:
+  - positions
+  - design
+  - announcements
+---
+(Remote, Contract)
+
+## About the Role
+We're searching for a design contractor to update our digital franchises. This includes but isn't limited to our websites ([here](https://plasticlabs.ai), [here](https://honcho.dev), & [here](https://blog.plasticlabs.ai)) and assets for social sites.
+
+A good fit is someone who is full-stack; has a clearly defined process; is willing to work with existing brand kit primitives; has proven ability to cohere quickly to team aesthetic, product, and mission; and can deliver fresh, subversive ideas rapidly.
+
+If you've explored Plastic Labs and are excited by what we're up to, let's chat.
+
+## About You
+- 2-5 years experience professional full time designer
+- Full-stack development ability
+- Ability to design & build end-to-end
+- Ability to grok product, mission, & aesthetics quickly
+- Refined organized process for aligning to company needs
+- Capacity to scope work & execute in predetermined timeframe
+- Robust portfolio of recent work
+- Recent customer references
+- High empathy & agency
+
+## How to Apply
+Please send the following to [email protected]:
+- **Resume/CV** in whatever form it exists (PDF, LinkedIn, website, etc)
+- **Portfolio** of notable & relevant work (links, docs, etc)
+- **Statement** of process--how do you work, why is this a fit, how can you help?
+- **References** you've worked with recently (2-3)
+
+Applications without these 4 items won't be considered, but be sure to optimize for speed over perfection.
+
+And it can't hurt to [join Discord](https://discord.gg/plasticlabs) or DM us [on X](https://x.com/plastic_labs) and introduce yourself.
+
+
+(Back to [[Work at Plastic]])

content/careers/Founding Engineer.md

@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+title: Founding Engineer
+date: 08.23.24
+tags:
+  - positions
+  - dev
+  - announcements
+---
+(NYC / Remote, Full-Time)
+
+## About the Role
+We're searching for a founding engineer to help build the future of Plastic. That means actively iterating on the current version of [Honcho](https://honcho.dev) while co-creating the next version of our novel user represenation networking infrastructure and what lies beyond.
+
+This role requires a full-stack engineer who can architect, build, and maintain complex systems from the ground up. That involves making critical technical decisions across the entire stack, from crafting intuitive user interfaces to designing robust backend systems, and managing cloud deployments. More than that, Plastic has several active projects, so context switching acumen is a must.
+
+It's an opportunity for high-agency problem solving at multiple layers of abstraction. We need someone passionate about owning projects end-to-end with a track record of successfully deploying and maintaining production systems. If you're excited by solving problems at the edge, learning on the fly, and searing your mark into fundamentally new technological paradigms, let's talk.
+
+## About You
+- 3-4 years experience in similar roles or equivalent
+- High cultural alignment with Plastic Labs' ethos
+- All requirements listed for our [[Full-Stack Engineer]] role, plus...
+- Adept thinking globally & locally, at multiple layers of abstraction, & high-level synthesis
+- Comfortable solving problems with high-agency, broad freedom, & significant responsibility
+- Impulse for rapid learning & opinionated application
+- Experience managing projects & shipping/owning end-to-end
+- Experience in system design, maintaining projects, deploying, optimization, architecture, & rapid iteration
+- Experience in DevSecOps
+- Up to date interest in OS AI community & LLM technologies
+- Complementary interest or experience in cryptography, machine learning, distributed systems, identity, etc a plus
+- Complementary interests in cognitive sciences (cs, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, & psychology) or other adjacent interdisciplinary fields a plus
+
+## How to Apply
+Please send the following to [email protected]:
+- **Resume/CV** in whatever form it exists (PDF, LinkedIn, website, etc)
+- **Portfolio** of notable work (GitHub, pubs, ArXiv, blog, X, etc)
+- **Statement** of alignment specific to Plastic Labs--how do you identify with our mission, how can you contribute, etc? (points for brief, substantive, heterodox)
+
+Applications without these 3 items won't be considered, but be sure to optimize for speed over perfection. If relevant, be sure to credit the LLM you used.
+
+And it can't hurt to [join Discord](https://discord.gg/plasticlabs) and introduce yourself or engage with [our GitHub](https://github.com/plastic-labs).
+
+
+(Back to [[Work at Plastic]])

content/careers/Full-Stack Engineer.md

@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
+---
+title: Full-Stack Engineer
+date: 08.23.24
+tags:
+  - positions
+  - dev
+  - announcements
+---
+(NYC / Remote, Full-Time)
+
+## About the Role
+We're searching for a full-stack engineer to help build [Honcho](https://honcho.dev), our user represenation infrastructure, and accelerate the development of a new paradigm of AI personalization.
+
+You should be comfortable working across the stack, from crafting user interfaces to designing APIs and managing deployments. It requires strong foundations both frontend and backend. 
+
+This role is a fast-paced opportunity to work alongside a seasoned interdisciplinary team. If you're eager to learn, can tackle diverse challenges quickly, and love building at the edge, get in touch.
+
+## About You
+- 1-2 years experience or equivalent (new grads OK)
+- High cultural alignment with Plastic Labs' ethos
+- Impulse for rapid learning & trying new tech at the edge
+- Adept with Python &/ Node.js
+- Experience building CRUD APIs
+- Experience with basic Linux & Shell
+- Experience with cloud deployment (AWS, GCP, Azure, Fly, etc)
+- Experience with SQL databases
+- Experience with Docker containers
+- Experience with Github & Git workflows
+- Experience leveraging AI tools to argument workflow
+- Familiarity with & interest in LLMs
+- Interest in security, distributed systems, & identity
+- Complementary interest in cognitive sciences (cs, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, & psychology) or other adjacent interdisciplinary fields a plus
+
+## How to Apply
+Please send the following to [email protected]:
+- **Resume/CV** in whatever form it exists (PDF, LinkedIn, website, etc)
+- **Portfolio** of notable work (GitHub, pubs, ArXiv, blog, X, etc)
+- **Statement** of alignment specific to Plastic Labs--how do you identify with our mission, how can you contribute, etc? (points for brief, substantive, heterodox)
+
+Applications without these 3 items won't be considered, but be sure to optimize for speed over perfection. If relevant, be sure to credit the LLM you used.
+
+And it can't hurt to [join Discord](https://discord.gg/plasticlabs) and introduce yourself or engage with [our GitHub](https://github.com/plastic-labs).
+
+
+(Back to [[Work at Plastic]])

content/careers/ML Research Engineer.md

@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
+---
+title: ML Research Engineer
+date: 08.23.24
+tags:
+  - positions
+  - research
+  - dev
+  - announcements
+---
+(NYC / Remote, Full-Time)
+
+## About the Role
+We're searching for a machine learning research engineer excited to work on problems critical to the next version of [Honcho](https://honcho.dev). In large part, this means exploring novel ways to create and leverage high-fidelity user representations.
+
+This role requires subversive tactics for working with LLMs--approaching from a representation level, top down thinking, emergent abilities, meta-methods, etc. There's a massive under-explored gulf between deterministic, structured LLM use cases and xenocognitive psychoanalysis. Within it lies enormous opportunity to investigate human-LLM coherence and the personalized, positive sum experiences we can build on that substrate. 
+
+We think the lack of study here is heavily to blame for the divorce of ML evals and product metrics. This leads to poor application retention, trust violations, high churn, and avoiding (abandoning?) much of the space of possible AI apps. Especially those characterized by personalization, user coherence, individual alignment, and social acuity.
+
+At Plastic, you'll have the opportunity to work with an interdisciplinary team to discover the best ways to represent human identity, unite ML & product outcomes, train best in class theory of mind models, author open-ended evals & frameworks, publish research, contribute to OS ML, set new user data standards of transparency, and shine a light on overhung capabilities lying latent in large language models.
+
+## About You
+- 2-3 years NLP ML experience or equivalent
+- Up to date on OS AI community & technologies 
+- Comfortable in Unix environment + attendant command line tools (Git, Docker, etc)
+- High cultural alignment with Plastic Labs' ethos
+- Experience training, fine-tuning, & evaluating LLM performance 
+- Experience implementing & maintaining systems based on SOTA research
+- Experience or background in alignment & interpretability methods
+- Proficiency with some set of popular Python ML libraries (e.g PyTorch, TF, JAX, HF transformers, etc)
+- Complementary interest or experience specific to representation engineering, control vectors, prompt optimization, sparse auto-encoders, agentic frameworks, emergent behaviors, theory of mind, identity a plus
+- Complementary background in cognitive sciences (cs, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, & psychology) or other adjacent interdisciplinary fields a plus
+
+## How to Apply
+Please send the following to [email protected]:
+- **Resume/CV** in whatever form it exists (PDF, LinkedIn, website, etc)
+- **Portfolio** of notable work (GitHub, pubs, ArXiv, blog, X, etc)
+- **Statement** of alignment specific to Plastic Labs--how do you identify with our mission, how can you contribute, etc? (points for brief, substantive, heterodox)
+
+Applications without these 3 items won't be considered, but be sure to optimize for speed over perfection. If relevant, be sure to credit the LLM you used.
+
+And it can't hurt to [join Discord](https://discord.gg/plasticlabs) and introduce yourself or engage with [our GitHub](https://github.com/plastic-labs).
+
+## Research We're Excited About
+[Prompt Programming for Large Language Models: Beyond the Few-Shot Paradigm](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2102.07350)  
+[Theory of Mind May Have Spontaneously Emerged in Large Language Models](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2302.02083v3)  
+[Think Twice: Perspective-Taking Improved Large Language Models' Theory-of-Mind Capabilities](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.10227)
+[Representation Engineering: A Top-Down Approach to AI Transparency](https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.01405)
+[Theia Vogel's post on Representation Engineering Mistral 7B an Acid Trip](https://vgel.me/posts/representation-engineering/)  
+[A Roadmap to Pluralistic Alignment](https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.05070)  
+[Open-Endedness is Essential for Artificial Superhuman Intelligence](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2406.04268)  
+[Simulators](https://generative.ink/posts/simulators/)  
+[Extended Mind Transformers](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2406.02332)  
+[Violation of Expectation via Metacognitive Prompting Reduces Theory of Mind Prediction Error in Large Language Models](https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.06983)  
+[Constitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI Feedback](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.08073)  
+[Claude's Character](https://www.anthropic.com/research/claude-character)  
+[Language Models Represent Space and Time](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.02207)  
+[Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03442)  
+[Meta-Rewarding Language Models: Self-Improving Alignment with LLM-as-a-Meta-Judge](https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.19594)  
+[Spontaneous Reward Hacking in Iterative Self-Refinement](https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.04549)  
+[... accompanying twitter thread](https://x.com/JanePan_/status/1813208688343052639)  
+
+
+(Back to [[Work at Plastic]])

content/careers/Plastic Intern(s).md

@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+---
+title: Plastic Intern(s)
+date: 08.23.24
+tags:
+  - positions
+  - dev
+  - research
+  - announcements
+---
+(NYC / Remote, Part-Time)
+
+## About the Role
+We're always keenly on the lookout for talented young technologists aligned with our mission. Happy to accommodate the right fit in a variety of flexible paid formats and commitments. And we're open to creative and additive non-technical possibilities.
+
+If you're bored at school and looking to learn by doing; have too much free time and want to get your hands dirty; or thinking about what to do next summer, hit us up.
+
+## About You
+- High cultural alignment with Plastic Labs' ethos
+- Impulse for rapid learning & trying new tech at the edge
+- Familiarity with & interest in LLMs
+- Significant experience &/ interest in a number of areas described in our [[Full-Stack Engineer]], [[ML Research Engineer]], &/ [[Founding Engineer]] "About You" sections
+- Alignment with or interest in topics and fields of inquiry explored or anything on [our blog](https://blog.plasticlabs.ai)
+- Complementary interest in cryptography, distributed systems, security, identity, cognitive sciences (computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, & psychology) or other adjacent interdisciplinary fields a plus
+
+## How to Apply
+Start by DM'ing us [on X](https://x.com/plastic_labs), joining [our Discord](https://discord.gg/plasticlabs) and engaging, or contributing to [our GitHub](https://github.com/plastic-labs). Don't overthink it.
+
+If it's a fit, we'll ask you to send the following to [email protected]:
+- **Resume/CV** in whatever form it exists (PDF, LinkedIn, website, etc)
+- **Portfolio** of notable work (GitHub, pubs, ArXiv, blog, X, etc)
+- **Statement** of alignment specific to Plastic Labs--how do you identify with our mission, how can you contribute, etc? (points for brief, substantive, heterodox)
+
+Try to cover these 3 categories in some way, but be sure to optimize for speed over perfection.
+
+
+(Back to [[Work at Plastic]])