LLM Engineer | Featured Fintech Venture Company

【About the Company】

Aiming to realize a world in which people can "know the economy now", the company is a Fintech venture company initiated by the University of Tokyo that uses big data analysis to visualize the consumer price index and other economic statistics in real time, and to visualize corporate management strategies.

It was established in February 2015 as the predecessor of the "University of Tokyo Daily Price Index (now Nikkei CPINow)" project in Tsutomu Watanabe Laboratory, Graduate School of Economics, University of Tokyo. They are currently developing a real-time statistical database service "NowcaSTats" to support asset management and economic research operations of more than 250 domestic and foreign financial institutions, think tanks, governments, government-affiliated financial institutions, and overseas hedge funds.

Since August 2016, the company has been strategically expanding its global business through a management integration with Finatext, a Fintech venture company established in 2014 by the University of Tokyo. The company will develop new indicators and proprietary algorithms for Nikkei CPINOW and develop new business in the asset management field by leveraging Finetext's strengths in building services in the asset management field and its vast volume of data centered on individual investors.

【Job Description】 【Recruitment Background】
As a member of the Finetext Group, this University of Tokyo startup provides analysis services using alternative data (big data that has not been utilized to date).
Nowcast LLM Labs, a new team dedicated to the secure use of Large Language Models ("LLMs") for financial business, has been established, and they are looking for a new team member to lead the team.

In this position, you will develop support for introducing ChatGPT to players such as securities firms and asset management companies.
In addition, you will lead the development that goes beyond mere technical validation, such as the integration of ChatGPT into Nowcast's SaaS for analysis using alternative data.

【Responsibilities】
You will be responsible for planning, drafting, and developing projects/products using LLM.
・Research and investigation of technology trends and new technologies related to LLM
・Collaboration and cooperation with related internal and external departments and partner companies
・Project progress management, quality control, and schedule management
・Planning of solutions and products using LLM
・Promotion of LLM-related development

【Attractiveness】
・Ability to integrate LLM into their own products
・Experience in creating LLM case studies with clients such as securities firms and asset management companies
・As a small elite organization consisting of top-class members from various fields, both domestic and international, the speed of decision-making is fast and close to the management level.
・A global environment for those who want to make the most of their English skills, with several foreign nationals on staff and MTGs conducted in English.

【Members】
・Mr. Sumida (Lead Data Engineer)
Majored in econometrics at the Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics, the University of Tokyo. He began his internship at the company in 2018 with the belief that high-quality, high-frequency data is necessary to understand economic phenomena.
While performing engineering work, he became more interested in information science, and in 2019 he will use the company's study support to enter the Department of Computer Science at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, where he will conduct research in computational linguistics/natural language processing. He joined the company in April 2021.
He is the lead data scientist for the Nowcast LLM Lab, which is provided by the Finetext Group.
Interview Article: https://note.com/finatext/n/n6b2319af1915?magazine_key=m11adca1f2d6f

・Mr. Ohno (Data Engineer)
Majored in particle theory at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Science, and interned at several IT ventures during his studies, working on projects using machine learning. After completing his graduate studies in March 2020, he joined the company, where he is in charge of creating and operating a pipeline for handling POS data and creating a data analysis infrastructure for the entire company. He enjoys participating in AtCoder and Kaggle competitions, and has won several competition awards, including Competition Master at Kaggle.
Interview Article: https://carituku.com/heartstory/%e6%a0%aa%e5%bc%8f%e4%bc%9a%e7%a4%be%e3%83%8a%e3%82%a6%e3%82%ad%e3%83%a3%e3%82%b9%e3%83%88/
 

【Working conditions & treatment】

10:00～19:00

・Saturday/Sunday/National Holiday
・Annual Paid Leave
・New Year Holidays
・Parental Leave
・Congratulations & Condolence Leave
・Summer Holiday

・Full social insurance
・Incentive (trust-type SO) system available
・Commuting allowance
・Visa support
・No smoking indoors

1) Life Support
・Marriage leave and congratulatory money: Special paid leave (7 days) and congratulatory money (50,000 yen) are provided for marriages.
・Parental leave and congratulatory money: Special paid leave (5 days) and congratulatory money (500,000 yen per baby!) for the birth of a child. (500,000 yen per baby!!!)) are provided for the birth of a child.
・Support for congratulatory and mourning occasions: Special paid leave (3 to 7 days) is provided for marriage, childbirth, and of course, in case of any misfortunes that may occur.
・Consecutive vacation days: In addition to paid leave, employees are allowed to take 5 consecutive days off.
・Allowance for dependents: Up to 100,000 yen per month per person depending on the number of children before elementary school age

2) Learning Support
・Weekly English conversation lessons are offered to all employees who wish to take them.
・Career development support: The company actively provides study support necessary for individual career development.
・Study support: Up to 10,000 yen per month can be used at company expense to participate in seminars and purchase technical and specialized books as desired.

【Required】
・Practical experience with machine learning and natural language processing
・Experience in development using Python
・Experience with large-scale language models, both business and personal

【Preferred】
・Experience in conference presentations and writing papers related to AI technologies
・Experience with cloud services (AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.)

【Ideal Applicants】
・Customer-oriented development
Always consider what the customer is looking for, and work backwards from there to determine development priorities.

・Take ownership of product growth
Able to see the growth of the product as their own business, and be enthusiastic about providing value to customers through the product.
Able to proactively contribute to the growth of the product, regardless of the scope of your responsibility.

・Able to get people involved and drive things forward
Able to involve others in the solution of a problem, rather than solving it alone.
Able to think first about the results of the team, rather than his/her own results.

・Intellectually curious and enjoys learning
Able to learn engineering domain as well as to input various knowledge necessary for the improvement of the product.
Able to apply the knowledge they have learned to their work without leaving it at that.

・Able to be muddled and detail-oriented.
Able to pay attention to the nooks and crannies of data for clean data and valuable analysis, and to work meticulously on details