Senior Applied Research Scientist - Foundation Models

About the role:

Ambient.ai is hiring a Senior Applied Research Scientist to build the next generation of foundation models for computer vision. You will join a team responsible for building multimodal models with state-of-the-art performance on real-world vision benchmarks. In this role, you’ll own full-cycle model development: from pre-training and fine-tuning on image-language data to applying distillation and compression techniques for deployment. This is a hands-on, cross-functional role where your work will directly impact our mission of preventing every security incident possible.

What you'll do:

• Develop & Optimize VLMs: Design and optimize transformer-based vision-language models to understand images, videos, and text, and optimize for real-time inference.

• Pre-training & Fine-tuning: Own the full training pipeline—from pre-training on image-text data to fine-tuning for Ambient.ai’s physical security domain and use cases. 

• Model Compression & Optimization: Apply techniques like distillation, quantization, and pruning to reduce model size and latency, enabling efficient edge deployment.

• Leverage Open-Source & Innovate: Use and extend state-of-the-art open-source models. Prototype new architectures and training methods to advance Ambient.ai’s multimodal AI research.

• Cross-Team Collaboration: Work with engineering and product teams to integrate models into the platform. Iterate based on real-world feedback and deployment data to improve performance.

• Research and Experimentation: Stay current with vision, NLP, and multimodal AI research. Design experiments to test new algorithms and continually enhance our core AI systems.

What you'll bring:

• Ph.D. or Master’s in CS, EE, or related field, with a strong foundation in AI/ML (Ph.D. preferred or Master’s with strong experience)

• Proficient in Python/C++ and deep learning frameworks like PyTorch or TensorFlow. Comfortable with large-scale training pipelines

• Hands-on experience with CNNs, Transformers, and Vision Transformers (ViT). Strong understanding of vision-language models and how to fine-tune or adapt them

• Proven skills in model training and optimization, including fine-tuning on large datasets and applying distillation, quantization, or similar techniques. Experience with foundation or multimodal models is a plus.

• Strong problem-solving ability: quick prototyping, diagnosing failure cases, and iterating on solutions

• Startup experience preferred: Comfortable with ambiguity, fast iteration, and owning projects end-to-end

Why join us:

• We are creating an entirely new category within a 120+ billion-dollar physical security industry and looking for team members who are also passionate about our mission to prevent every security incident possible

• We have an impressive customer roster of F500 companies, including Adobe, SentinelOne, and TikTok

• You’ll receive everything you need to hit the ground running, including cutting-edge equipment and branded gear

We’ve found that in-person time meaningfully supports collaboration, creativity, and team alignment. Our talent, engineering, product, design, and marketing teams work from our Redwood City office three days a week. All other Bay Area employees join on Fridays to stay connected and close out the week together.

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