Research Scientist
Research scientists in these roles formulate and execute high-impact research problems spanning multimodal AI, video understanding, generative modeling, and autonomous systems, often balancing fundamental innovation with product integration. They distinguish themselves by combining exceptional experimental judgment with the ability to identify and frame novel problems where existing benchmarks are insufficient, rather than simply executing well-defined research directions. These scientists typically work within interdisciplinary research teams at major AI labs and well-funded startups, collaborating closely with ML engineers to translate advances into production systems while maintaining the rigor needed for publication at top-tier venues.
Skills
What companies are looking for in this role.
Designing and implementing novel machine learning algorithms and architectures for specialized domains
Conducting empirical research and rigorous evaluation of model performance and capabilities
Publishing research findings in top-tier academic conferences and peer-reviewed journals
Prototyping and iterating on research ideas with clean, maintainable code
Collaborating with cross-functional engineering and product teams to translate research into production systems
Developing and optimizing large-scale neural networks and foundation models
Designing evaluation frameworks and metrics for assessing model quality and safety
Applying reinforcement learning and post-training techniques to improve model behavior
Building data pipelines and managing large-scale data processing for model training
Conducting ablation studies and analyzing model scaling properties and architectural choices
Building agentic systems and orchestrating intelligent agents for complex tasks
Implementing multimodal learning across text, image, audio, and video modalities
Developing techniques for model interpretability and understanding internal representations
Optimizing models for real-time inference and production deployment constraints
Developing safety, fairness, and alignment techniques for AI systems
Designing grounding and retrieval mechanisms for information-seeking tasks
Communicating technical concepts clearly through writing and presentations
Translating abstract research problems into concrete technical implementations
Mentoring junior researchers and fostering collaborative research environments
Leading research initiatives and managing project scope across teams
Conducting rapid iteration and adaptation in response to experimental results
Identifying research directions aligned with business impact and user needs
Technology
The tools and technologies that define this role.
Open Jobs
102 open Research Scientist jobs across 33 companies.
Other Research & Science roles
Engineers who build the systems, tools, and infrastructure that enable research.
Senior individual contributors at AI labs working on core model development, pre-training, post-training, and model optimization.
Leaders who manage research teams, set research agendas, and guide scientific strategy.
Scientists who apply machine learning techniques to solve specific product or domain problems.
Scientists working in chemistry, biology, physics, pharmacology, and other physical or life sciences.