AI Research Engineer (Model Compression & Quantization)

Tether; Dubai; Remote; AED 661,000 - 881,000; Full time

Job summary

Tether Ltd. is seeking a senior AI research scientist to advance model compression for multimodal systems, including LLMs and VLMs, optimizing for edge devices while preserving fidelity and efficiency.

You will prototype quantization, distillation, and pruning pipelines, set performance metrics, and publish results at leading AI conferences. This role supports global, remote collaboration across teams and stakeholders.

Qualifications

• Degree in Computer Science or related field; PhD preferred in NLP/ML with strong AI R&D track record.
• Experience with PyTorch or equivalent frameworks.
• Hands-on with model quantization including QAT and PTQ.
• Research and hands-on with distillation for compressing large models.
• Experience with model pruning for efficient models.
• Solid understanding of transformers and multimodal architectures.
• Familiarity with C++ is a plus for low-level kernels.

Responsibilities

• Apply low-bit quantization to reduce model size and latency while preserving accuracy.
• Use knowledge distillation to transfer capabilities from large to small models.
• Implement pruning to remove redundant parameters and heads.
• Analyze trade-offs between size, latency, memory and accuracy.
• Research mixed-precision quantization and adaptive pruning schedules.
• Stay updated with state-of-the-art in multimodal and generative AI.
• Document methodologies, experiments, and results for reproducibility.
• Publish findings in top conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ACL, AAAI).

Skills

Compression techniques

Multimodal AI

Quantization

Knowledge distillation

Model pruning

Edge deployment

LLMs/VLMs

Performance metrics

Education

PhD in NLP or Machine Learning

Tools

PyTorch

C++ (plus)

Job description

Join Tether and Shape the Future of Digital Finance

At Tether, we’re not just building products, we’re pioneering a global financial revolution. Our cutting‑edge solutions empower businesses—from exchanges and wallets to payment processors and ATMs—to seamlessly integrate reserve‑backed tokens across blockchains. By harnessing the power of blockchain technology, Tether enables you to store, send, and receive digital tokens instantly, securely, and globally, all at a fraction of the cost. Transparency is the bedrock of everything we do, ensuring trust in every transaction.

Innovate with Tether

Tether Finance: Our innovative product suite features the world’s most trusted stablecoin, USDT, relied upon by hundreds of millions worldwide, alongside pioneering digital asset tokenization services.

But that’s just the beginning:

Tether Power: Driving sustainable growth, our energy solutions optimize excess power for Bitcoin mining using eco‑friendly practices in state‑of‑the‑art, geo‑diverse facilities.

Tether Data: Fueling breakthroughs in AI and peer‑to‑peer technology, we reduce infrastructure costs and enhance global communications with cutting‑edge solutions like KEET, our flagship app that redefines secure and private data sharing.

Tether Education: Democratizing access to top‑tier digital learning, we empower individuals to thrive in the digital and gig economies, driving global growth and opportunity.

Tether Evolution: At the intersection of technology and human potential, we are pushing the boundaries of what is possible, crafting a future where innovation and human capabilities merge in powerful, unprecedented ways.

Why Join Us?

Our team is a global talent powerhouse, working remotely from every corner of the world. If you’re passionate about making a mark in the fintech space, this is your opportunity to collaborate with some of the brightest minds, pushing boundaries and setting new standards. We’ve grown fast, stayed lean, and secured our place as a leader in the industry.

If you have excellent English communication skills and are ready to contribute to the most innovative platform on the planet, Tether is the place for you.

Are you ready to be part of the future?

About the job

As a member of our AI research team, you will drive innovation in model compression and efficient deployment for advanced multimodal AI systems, including large language models (LLMs) and vision‑language models (VLMs). Your work will focus on reducing model footprint and computational cost while preserving accuracy, enabling high‑performance AI to run efficiently across resource‑constrained edge devices. You will apply and advance compression techniques such as quantization, knowledge distillation, and pruning to streamline complex multimodal architectures that integrate text, images, and audio.

We expect you to have deep expertise in model compression methods and a strong background in multimodal model architectures. You will adopt a hands‑on, research‑driven approach to develop, test, and implement novel compression strategies that balance model size, latency, throughput, and accuracy. Your responsibilities include building robust compression pipelines, establishing performance and fidelity metrics, and addressing bottlenecks in production inference. The ultimate goal is to deliver scalable, low‑memory, low‑latency AI systems on edge devices (i.e., smartphones) that maintain high fidelity and tangible real‑world value.

Responsibilities

• Apply low‑bit quantization to reduce model size and inference latency for generative AI models (LLMs, VLMs, multimodal) while maintaining accuracy and output quality.
• Leverage knowledge distillation to transfer capabilities from larger teacher models to smaller student models, enabling efficient multimodal reasoning across text, image, and audio inputs.
• Implement pruning techniques to remove redundant parameters and attention heads, reducing computational overhead without sacrificing task performance.
• Analyze trade‑offs between model efficiency (size, latency, memory) and accuracy across quantization, distillation, and pruning methods; propose improvements based on empirical findings.
• Research and apply mixed‑precision quantization and other advanced compression strategies (e.g., adaptive pruning schedules, distillation with intermediate feature matching) to optimize the accuracy–performance balance.
• Stay current with the latest research in model compression, including emerging techniques for multimodal and generative architectures.
• Document methodologies, experiments, and results clearly to support reproducibility, internal collaboration, and stakeholder communication.
• Author technical papers and publish findings in top‑tier conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ACL, AAAI) to advance the field of model compression for multimodal AI.

Qualifications

• A degree in Computer Science or related field. Ideally PhD in NLP, Machine Learning, or a related field, complemented by a solid track record in AI R&D (with good publications in A* conferences).
• Experience with PyTorch deep learning frameworks or equivalent frameworks
• Hands‑on experience with model quantization including both Quantization‑Aware Training (QAT) and Post‑Training Quantization (PTQ).
• Research and hands‑on experience with knowledge distillation for compressing large models into smaller, efficient ones.
• Research and hands‑on experience with model pruning for compressing large models into smaller, efficient ones.
• Solid understanding of neural network architectures and training processes – Including transformers (e.g., LLMs, VLMs), backpropagation, optimization, and fine‑tuning techniques.
• Familiarity with C++ is a plus (especially for implementing low‑level quantization kernels or inference optimizations).