seeking research & ML roles · from April 2027

Daniel Franzen

>Deep Learning Researcher · PhD Candidate

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz · SFB TRR 146

I build neural networks that respect symmetry, and teach language models to reason abstractly. Winner of the ARC Prize 2024, runner-up in 2025, and solo winner of ARC-AGI-3 Milestone Prize 2 in 2026.

I’m currently looking for research scientist or research engineer roles in AI and deep learning, starting in April 2027, with a preference for remote work. If you think I could be a good fit for your team, please get in touch.

Achievements

ARC Prize 2024 Winner

1^ST PLACE

Winning entry on the flagship abstraction & reasoning challenge (alongside Jan Disselhoff) — 53.5% accuracy with a fine-tuned 12B-parameter LLM using test-time training and a custom inference and scoring algorithm.

Machine Learning Street Talk Kaggle leaderboard Technical report

ARC Prize 2025 Runner-Up

2^ND PLACE

Second place on the harder next-generation benchmark — using a 2D-aware masked-diffusion LLM with recursive self-refinement. Kaggle gold medal, as part of the ARChitects team (with Jan Disselhoff and David Hartmann).

ARC Prize Team Interview Kaggle leaderboard Technical report

ARC-AGI-3 2026 Milestone Prize 2 Winner

1^ST PLACE · MILESTONE 2

First place among prize-eligible entries at the second milestone as a solo competitor, building on Tufa Labs’ Duck harness with improved agent tools, adaptive compute allocation, and optimized inference.

Technical Report