Research Engineer – Multimodal AI & Interaction

Huawei Canada; Markham; On-site; CAD 106,000 - 156,000; Full time

Job summary

Huawei Canada is seeking a Researcher to join the Human-Machine Interaction Lab. You will research, design, and build broadband multimodal AI capabilities for intelligent consumer devices, spanning speech, vision, language, touch, motion, and contextual sensing.

You will own projects from exploration through evaluation and product validation. The ideal candidate holds a Master’s or PhD in CS/AI-related fields, has a strong ML background with PyTorch/ TensorFlow/JAX, and demonstrates experience

Qualifications

• Master's or PhD in CS, EE/CE, AI, ML, Statistics, Math, HCI or related field (exceptional Bachelor's candidates considered).
• A strong ML/deep learning background with hands-on PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX experience.
• Expertise in multimodal learning, speech/audio, vision, NLP, generative AI, or foundation models.
• Experience with LLMs/VLMs, agentic AI, multi-agent systems or context-aware intelligent systems is a strong asset.
• Proven track record turning research into working prototypes, patents, publications, or shipped products.
• End-to-end ML development: data prep, training, evaluation, debugging, deployment.

Responsibilities

• Research, design, and build next-generation multimodal AI capabilities for intelligent devices.
• Identify high-impact problems and own projects from exploration to product validation.
• Develop models for multimodal perception, reasoning, interaction, and generation.
• Prototype ideas quickly and evolve concepts into demonstrations.
• Create datasets, eval methodologies, and establish metrics for interaction quality.
• Collaborate with research, engineering, and product teams on deployment considerations.
• Contribute reproducible code, docs, and IP through publications, patents, or open source when appropriate.

Skills

Python

PyTorch

TensorFlow

JAX

LLMs/VLMs

Multimodal learning

Research-to-product

Collaboration across teams

Education

Master's or PhD in CS/EE/CE/AI/ML/HCI

exceptional Bachelor's candidates considered

Tools

Typescript/Kotlin

C++/Java

Job description

Huawei Canada has an immediate permanent opening for a Researcher.

About the team:

The Huawei Human-Machine Interaction Lab unites global researchers, engineers, and designers to redefine human technology relationships through user centered, hands on research. We focus on agentic AI and multimodal interaction (voice, touch, vision, gesture) across smartphones, wearables, and emerging devices—advancing agentic workflows, multi-agent orchestration, and intuitive human-AI interfaces. By tightly integrating sensing, algorithms, and systems, our prototype driven work ships directly to products, enabling seamless task delegation and human AI collaboration at scale.

About the job:

• Research, design, and build next-generation multimodal AI capabilities for intelligent consumer devices, spanning speech/audio, vision, language, touch, gesture, motion, and contextual sensing
• Identify high-impact research problems and own projects from early exploration through model development, evaluation, and product-oriented validation
• Design, train, fine-tune, and evaluate deep learning and foundation models for multimodal perception, reasoning, interaction, and generation
• Develop new approaches for reasoning across modalities to enable more natural, adaptive human-machine interaction
• Rapidly prototype research ideas, reproduce state-of-the-art methods, and evolve promising concepts into robust demonstrations
• Build datasets and evaluation methodologies, run rigorous experiments, and establish metrics reflecting both model performance and real interaction quality
• Optimize models for real-world constraints (latency, memory, power, privacy, robustness, on-device vs. cloud) and collaborate across research, engineering, and product teams
• Contribute reproducible code, documentation, and IP through publications, patents, or open-source projects when appropriate

The total target annual compensation for this position ranges from $106,000 - $156,000 depending on education, experience, and demonstrated expertise.

Job requirements

About the ideal candidate:

• Master's or PhD in CS, EE/CE, AI, ML, Statistics, Math, HCI, or related field (exceptional Bachelor's candidates considered)
• Strong foundation in ML/deep learning with hands-on experience in PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, or similar
• Technical depth in multimodal learning, speech/audio, computer vision, NLP, generative AI, or foundation models
• Experience with LLMs/VLMs, agentic AI, multi-agent systems, or context-aware intelligent systems is a strong asset
• Track record turning research into working systems: prototypes, open-source, patents, publications, or shipped products
• End-to-end ML development experience: data prep, training, evaluation, debugging, optimization, deployment
• Understanding of practical AI trade-offs (quality, latency, compute, memory, robustness) and on-device/resource-constrained deployment
• 3+ years relevant research or industry experience (including graduate research), with strong Python (Typescript / Kotlin, C++/Java a plus) and collaboration skills across teams

Additional Information:

Huawei Canada is committed to a fair, inclusive, and accessible recruitment process. If you require accommodation during any stage of the hiring process, please let us know and we will work with you to meet your needs.

All applications for this position are reviewed directly by our hiring team, we do not use artificial intelligence tools to screen or select candidates.