Senior Research Engineer – AI Gaming Tech Startup (Hybrid)

LocusX

Montreal

On-site

CAD 90,000 - 120,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Equity opportunities

Ownership in projects

Job summary

An innovative AI gaming tech startup is seeking a Senior AI Researcher to lead groundbreaking research in game development. The role emphasizes both exploration of novel AI techniques and practical application, with a focus on delivering measurable results. Ideal candidates will have a strong background in AI, ML, and NLP along with significant research experience. This full-time position offers a hybrid working model in Montreal, Canada.

Qualifications

5+ years of AI research experience with peer-reviewed publications.
Strong engineering skills in deploying and optimizing AI systems.
Ability to bridge research novelty with product value.

Responsibilities

Lead research on AI architectures for game development.
Collaborate to turn research into production-ready solutions.
Prototype and evaluate AI agents within development pipelines.

Skills

AI research

ML techniques

NLP

Problem-solving

Education

Master/PhD in AI, ML, or related field

Tools

Neural networks

Graph neural networks

Multimodal models

Job description

Senior Research Engineer – AI Gaming Tech Startup (Hybrid)

At LocusX, we’re aiming to steadily revolutionize the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and reimagine the game development pipeline by embedding intelligence at its core. Our platform uses ML to automate testing, debugging, and production insights—helping studios ship faster, smarter, and more reliably. Founded by gaming and AI veterans, we’re building a research-driven culture where cutting-edge ideas turn into real-world breakthroughs.

About The Role

We’re seeking a Senior AI Researcher to lead our efforts in exploring, prototyping, and validating novel AI techniques that can transform game development workflows. You’ll work on the frontier of LLM reasoning, context understanding, multimodal AI, and AI-human collaboration, with an emphasis on bringing research concepts to production readiness.

This role blends pure research curiosity with practical product impact—you’ll have the freedom to explore ambitious ideas, but also the responsibility to see them deliver measurable results for our customers.

The position is full-time and is based in Montreal, Canada. The work model is hybrid.

Compensation

Competitive salary and equity.

In This Role, You Will Be

Conducting research on advanced AI architectures relevant to game development pipelines, tackling challenges such as dynamic changes, data privacy, correlation, and causal discovery.
Prototyping and evaluating AI agents capable of operating within complex development pipelines
Developing and testing novel algorithms to interpret and reason over production data (e.g., bug reports, code commits, game assets, logs)
Building various components of the multimodal stack: datasets, modelling, evaluation, deployment and more.
Collaborating production and engineering to find important research directions that match our roadmap and turn research results into scalable, production-ready solutions.
Stay at the forefront of AI research by publishing internally and potentially externally if appropriate.
Be a key technical voice in the company, helping shape product roadmap and culture

You May Be a Good Fit If You have

a Master/PhD or equivalent industry research experience in AI, ML, NLP, or a related field
5+ years of AI research, with a proven track record of innovation and peer-reviewed publications or have significant software, ML, or research engineering experiences
Strong engineering skills, particularly in designing, deploying and optimizing multiple AI systems.
Enthusiasm staying at the forefront of technology trends and a commitment to continuous learning.
Prior work in startups, in gaming and/or developer tooling environments.
The ability to bridge the gap between research novelty and product value.

You Might Thrive in This Role If You

Are a team player, willing to do a variety of tasks that move the team forward preferring fast-moving collaborative projects to extensive solo effort
Have experience working with large size multimodal models including temporal sequences of text, audio, image and video.
Have deep knowledge of neural network algorithms, trends in ML space and challenges associated with SaaS deployment including privacy, data-quality and real-time decisions.
Show strong problem-solving skills and ability to identify technical improvements in complex systems and enjoy obsessively iterating on immediate blockers towards long-term goals.
Care about real-world impact of AI.
Have strong attention to detail

Strong Candidates May Also have experience with

LLMs and Agentic AI
Graph neural networks and common vision backbones
Transfer Learning, Federated Learning and Reinforcement Learning.

How We're Different

We believe that AI research has the potential to transform workplaces, improve human life, and increase efficiency, allowing people to spend their time on truly valuable activities. At LocusX, we prioritize innovation through collaborative cross-disciplinary initiatives within a workplace environment that fosters personal growth, mentorship, respect, and initiative. Our collaborative culture enables employees to reach their potential while delivering superior customer experiences and product excellence.

Why Join Us

Real ownership and the chance to build something meaningful!

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification.

Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed. We place a strong emphasis on attitude and determination over excessive qualifications and value diverse perspectives on our team, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to apply.

Seniority level