Inworlder Spotlight: Hayley Hu, Tech Lead Manager

Wondering what it’s like to work at Inworld? In our Inworlder Spotlights, we give you an inside look at our company culture and the dynamic group of engineers, creative technologists, scientists, and nerds building the future of AI characters with Inworld. Check out our open roles.

Name:  Hayley Hu

Title: Tech lead manager 

Pronouns: she/her

What are two fun facts we should know about you?

The only pet my family ever had was a horse named Bella. She was mostly for riding and lived to the ripe old age of 21.

Every painting in my house was done by me. 

Why did you choose to work at Inworld? 

I believe in the future of Inworld. When I was considering working at Inworld, I liked the fact that they’d built a strong foundation for growth. The team is incredibly talented in product development, marketing, and engineering. 

Plus, I love the flexibility that comes with working at an early-stage AI company.

What’s a day in your work life like? 

I usually drive to the office and get there around 8:30 am. I start my day by catching up on the news and brainstorming new ideas before my meetings begin. My mornings are filled with meetings, except on Thursdays, which are no-meeting days. 

In the afternoons, I focus on hands-on work like evaluating models, coding, and reviewing code. I often turn off Slack to concentrate. At the end of the day, I plan an agenda for meetings for the next day and go home around 6pm.

What’s your team like? 

Half of my team works remotely, so coordinating tasks is crucial for our productivity. Everyone is incredibly smart and hardworking. 

Our machine learning engineers each have their own strengths—some are meticulous with LLM quality tuning, while others excel at coding for optimization. And of course, some are great at both.

What’s an accomplishment you’re proud of from your time at Inworld?

I'm really proud that we developed an in-house LLM with cutting-edge throughput and customized quality for games. It was a challenging task because Inworld characters require diverse talking styles and strict jail-breaking constraints, and LLMs are inherently complex. 

However, our team tackled all these challenges successfully and, since I joined, our LLM traffic has grown 80x. I'm excited to see what challenges we can overcome next!

What is the culture like at Inworld?

At Inworld, both successes and valuable failures are important. In the AI industry, we have to experiment a lot, and not every experiment will succeed. But we believe that learning from these trials is a crucial step for growth. This mindset allows us to take big bets and create opportunities for both Inworld and our customers.

What’s the most unique thing about working here?

One unique aspect of working at Inworld is that every employee has the opportunity to make decisions. This was new to me when I joined, as I was used to just following rules. Over time, I've seen how my feedback has influenced company policies, productivity tools, performance review metrics, and short-term goals.

How have you grown professionally at Inworld?

I've learned a lot about making responsible and useful decisions that align with our long-term goals. This is quite different from my previous jobs, where my focus was mainly on short-term tasks.

How are you empowered here to do your best work?   

I'm grateful for the opportunities I have at work. Few people are as lucky as I am to work on cutting-edge technology that brings entertainment and joy to people. Additionally, I learn from my teammates every day, which empowers me to build on my existing knowledge and grow continuously.

Want to join our team? We’d love to hear from you. We have a number of roles open – including machine learning roles. Apply here!