Research Engineer – Multimodal AI & Interaction

Huawei Technologies Canada Co., Ltd.; Markham; On-site; CAD 106,000 - 156,000; Full time

Job summary

Huawei Technologies Canada Co., Ltd. seeks a researcher to advance multimodal AI for intelligent consumer devices, spanning speech, vision, language, touch, and context sensing.

You will own projects from exploration to product validation, designing and evaluating foundation models for multimodal perception and interaction. You will prototype ideas, build datasets, and run rigorous experiments while optimizing for practical constraints such as latency and on-device deployment, collaborating with

Qualifications

• Advanced degree in CS/AI/ML or related field; exceptional Bachelor's considered.
• Strong ML/deep learning foundation with hands-on PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX.
• Experience with LLMs/VLMs, agentic AI, multi-agent systems is a strong asset.
• 3+ years relevant research or industry experience with Python and collaboration across teams.

Responsibilities

• Research, design, and build next-generation multimodal AI capabilities for consumer devices.
• Identify high-impact research problems and own projects from exploration to validation.
• Design, train, fine-tune, and evaluate deep learning models for perception and interaction.
• Develop approaches for cross-modal reasoning for natural human-machine interaction.
• Prototype ideas, reproduce state-of-the-art methods, and create robust demos.
• Build datasets and evaluation methods; run rigorous experiments and metrics.
• Optimize models for latency, memory, privacy, and on-device deployment; collaborate across teams.
• Contribute reproducible code, documentation, and IP via publications, patents, or open-source.

Skills

Multimodal learning

PyTorch

TensorFlow

JAX

LLMs/VLMs

Python

Collaboration across teams

Research track record

On-device deployment concepts

Education

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

Exceptional Bachelor's 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.

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.