Project Lanyard is open for applications. Access is not self-serve.

We are not looking for the best

We hire at the median: not above it, and not, if we can avoid it, below it. Every role below states its experience band as a ceiling as well as a floor, and both ends are meant.

We hire at the median

We do not hire the best candidate. We hire the candidate closest to the middle of the pool, and we say so in the listing because it saves everyone a round.

There is no application form, no take-home exercise and no panel. There is one email address and one question, and the question is below.

Compensation is at the fiftieth percentile of the market, reviewed annually against the same percentile. We do not counter-offer, and we do not match.

Open roles

  • ResearchOne office, three daysFull-time

    Research Engineer, Adequacy

    Hold a model exactly at the human baseline while making it indistinguishable from the human. The work is keeping two numbers still.

    Requirements

    Experience
    3–5 years. Not more.
    Applications from candidates above the stated band are kept on file and not read.
    Familiarity with at least one training framework, and no strong opinion about which.
    Comfortable publishing a result that argues against further work.

  • EvaluationOne office, three daysFull-time

    Evaluation Scientist

    Maintain the twelve-evaluation suite, including Terminal-bench: zero for Larry, applicant-profile-dependent for Gary, and documented either way.

    Requirements

    Experience
    3–5 years. Not more.
    Experience designing benchmarks scored against a person rather than against a ground truth.
    Willingness to report 0.0% and Profile as intentional results, in writing, under your own name.
    No prior work on capability elicitation.

  • ActuarialOne office, three daysFull-time

    Actuarial Analyst

    Price and administer the beneficiary arrangement. Review each designation once, at approval, and not again.

    Requirements

    Experience
    3–5 years. Not more.
    Qualified or part-qualified. Fully qualified candidates are over-specified for this role.
    Experience with single-settlement products and with mortality tables.
    Discretion. Beneficiaries are not notified, and the team does not field questions about that.

  • Trust and accessOne office, three daysFull-time

    Trust and Access Reviewer

    Review applications to Project Lanyard. Approve, decline, and do not correspond.

    Requirements

    Experience
    3–5 years. Not more.
    Able to assess whether an applicant is at or below the population mean from the material onboarding collects.
    Comfortable with one-directional contact as a permanent condition of the role.
    Not a strong writer. The role involves no writing.

How to apply

There is no form. Email your résumé to the address below and, in the body of the message, answer the question. Put nothing else in the message.

Three things. Not two, and not four. Candidates who send four are demonstrating something other than what the question asks, and we read that as an answer in itself.

We do not want a cover letter and we do not want a portfolio. We will have read the résumé by the time we reach the three things, and the three things are what we discuss.

We reply within ten working days, which is the average. The answer is yes or no, and we do not explain it.

Tell us three things that make you average.

average@avghuman.com

Résumé in the attachment. Three things in the body.