Open to opportunities

John Thatcher

@johnthatcher

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AI researcher and data specialist focused on reinforcement learning from human feedback.

United Kingdom

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What I'm looking for

I seek research-driven roles in RL/RLHF or applied ML where I can improve model performance, mentor teams, collaborate remotely, and contribute to safe, effective AI systems.

I am an AI researcher and data specialist with over seven years' experience in data annotation, machine learning, and reinforcement learning research, currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Sheffield focused on RLHF for LLMs and robotics. I have industry experience at Apple and Endava, plus academic tutoring and research supervision, and I have published and presented work at IJCAI and NeurIPS workshops.

I excel at data evaluation, object tagging, improving AI model performance, and collaborating remotely across cross-functional teams; my work concentrates on reducing human burden in interactive RLHF systems while advancing safe, effective AI through rigorous evaluation and applied research.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Tutor & Research Assistant

University of Sheffield

Sep 2020 - Aug 2022 (1 year 11 months)

Delivered tutorials in AI, reinforcement learning, and programming; supervised undergraduate ML projects and final-year dissertations, improving student project outcomes and assessment quality.

Reinforcement Learning Machine Learning Python Java Student supervision Mentoring Research Assistance

AI/ML Data Specialist

Apple

Jan 2019 - Aug 2020 (1 year 7 months)

Conducted data annotation and pairwise quality assurance for speech recognition and NLP projects, improving training data quality and model performance in production systems.

Data Annotation QA NLP Speech Recognition Python Data Labeling

Software Engineer – AI/Data

Endava

Jul 2018 - Dec 2018 (5 months)

Built data pipelines and preprocessing scripts for client AI systems, automating data cleaning and evaluation to accelerate delivery of AI-integrated solutions for finance and retail clients.

Data Pipelines data preprocessing Python Automation)Model Evaluation ETL SQL Client Delivery Automation

Education

Degrees, certifications, and relevant coursework

University of Sheffield

Doctor of Philosophy, Computer Science

2022 -

Activities and societies: Research on RLHF for LLMs and robotics; academic teaching and research supervision; conference publications and presentations.

Pursuing a PhD in Computer Science researching reinforcement learning from human feedback to improve deep RL and fine-tune AI agents with minimal human input.