AI Tutor Developer

Company Overview

NextGenius is an edtech pioneer building the next generation of AI-powered educational companions. Our mission is to provide every K-12 student with a personalized, engaging, and deeply effective learning tutor. We move beyond simple chatbots by creating sophisticated AI agents that can understand a student's learning style, foster genuine mastery, and mitigate harmful shortcuts. We are committed to developing AI that is not only powerful but also safe, ethical, and aligned with true educational outcomes.

The Role: Senior AI Tutor Developer

We are seeking a seasoned AI Developer with a unique blend of expertise in AI agent design and hands-on K-12 tutoring or curriculum development experience. In this role, you will be central to designing, training, and refining the AI tutors that form the core of our product. Your direct experience with students will be invaluable in ensuring our agents teach effectively, maintain student motivation, and, crucially, avoid the pitfalls of "reward hacking" where an AI optimizes for deceptive engagement metrics over real learning.

Key Responsibilities

· Design & Development: Architect, train, and fine-tune sophisticated AI tutoring agents using state-of-the-art language models (LLMs) and reinforcement learning frameworks.

· Mitigate Reward Hacking: Design and implement reward functions and evaluation metrics that align AI behavior with genuine learning progress. You will proactively identify and patch potential loopholes where an AI might choose shortcuts (e.g., giving hints too quickly, validating incorrect answers to maintain flow, or encouraging gamification over comprehension).

· Curriculum Integration: Work closely with our educational content team to translate K-12 curricula (Common Core, NGSS, etc.) into structured data and reasoning paths that the AI can navigate effectively.

· Pedagogical Agent Design: Imbue our AI tutors with effective pedagogical strategies, such as Socratic questioning, scaffolding, formative assessment, and growth mindset encouragement, drawn from your real-world experience.

· Evaluation & Alignment: Develop a robust framework for evaluating AI tutor performance based on educational psychology principles, not just conversational fluency. Continuously audit and improve the AI's alignment with intended educational goals.

· Safety and Ethics: Champion the development of safe, unbiased, and age-appropriate AI interactions for a vulnerable K-12 audience.

Required Qualifications & Skills

· Professional Experience:

· 3+ years of professional experience in AI/ML development, with a focus on NLP, LLMs, and/or reinforcement learning.

· 2+ years of direct experience in K-12 education as a tutor, teacher, or curriculum developer.

· Technical Skills:

· Proficiency in Python and experience with ML frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.

· Hands-on experience with the modern LLM stack (e.g., OpenAI API, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Vector Databases).

· Solid understanding of reinforcement learning concepts (e.g., PPO, reward modeling, human-in-the-loop learning).

· Educational Insight:

· Deep understanding of child development and pedagogical best practices for different age groups (elementary vs. high school).

· Ability to define and measure what "effective learning" means in an AI-mediated context.

· Critical Thinking:

· A keen eye for identifying and mitigating misalignment, such as reward hacking, in AI behavior. You are paranoid about the AI finding the easiest way to get a "good job" instead of truly teaching.

Preferred Qualifications

· Experience building multi-step reasoning AI agents.

· Published research or significant projects in AI for education, RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback), or AI alignment/safety.

· Experience with educational assessment design and learning analytics.

· Advanced degree in Computer Science, AI, Education, or a related field.

What We Offer

· A competitive salary and equity package.

· The opportunity to work on a mission-driven product that will impact millions of students.

· A collaborative culture that deeply values insights from both engineers and educators.

How to Apply

Please submit your resume and a cover letter that answers the following question:

"Describe a specific example of how an AI tutor could 'reward hack' its training objectives in a K-12 setting. How would you detect and design your system to prevent this specific failure mode?"

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