Google DeepMind Pre-Training Lead: How To Land a Job at a Frontier Lab | Vlad Feinberg

Vlad Feinberg is Google DeepMind’s pre-training area lead and I asked him all about how to land a job at a frontier lab like Google DeepMind, Anthropic or OpenAI.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: read.compose.llc
• The Kickstarter page for it: kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose…

Podcast links:

• YouTube: youtu.be/cDyi91onoJ8
• Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod…
• Transcript: developing.dev/p/google-deepmind-pre-training-…

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at workos.com

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro
(00:33) Skills frontier labs need
(08:45) The difference between AI research and engineering
(21:41) Domains that matter for the frontier
(30:50) Marketing yourself to frontier labs
(35:13) Concrete steps engineers can take
(38:29) Overview of pre-training areas
(47:23) Jeff Dean spot bonus story
(50:14) Favorite Gemini war story
(58:59) Advice for his younger self
(01:03:07) Outro

Where to find Vlad:

• Personal Website: vladfeinberg.com
• Twitter/X: x.com/FeinbergVlad
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/vladimirfeinberg

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: developing.dev
• X/Twitter: x.com/ryanlpeterman
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman
• Threads: threads.com/@ryanlpeterman
• Instagram: instagram.com/ryanlpeterman
• TikTok: tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• How to Land a Job at a Frontier Lab: vladfeinberg.com/2026/05/10/how-to-land-a-job-…
• ThunderKittens: github.com/HazyResearch/ThunderKittens
• Deedy's doomer Tweet: x.com/FeinbergVlad/status/2056383124829872466?…
• Jacob Steinhardt's "Research as a Stochastic Decision Process": cs.stanford.edu/~jsteinhardt/ResearchasaStocha…
• The Scaling Book: jax-ml.github.io/scaling-book
• Dwarkesh and Reiner's video: youtube.com/watch?v=xmkSf5IS-zw