Senior Research Engineer – AI Gaming Tech Startup (Hybrid)

LocusX; Montreal; Hybrid; CAD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A gaming technology company based in Montreal is seeking a Senior Research Engineer to enhance AI workflows in game development. The role combines research and practical impact, focusing on advanced AI architectures. Ideal candidates should have 5+ years of AI research experience, a relevant Master's or PhD, and strong engineering skills. Join us for a competitive salary and equity in a hybrid work model.

Benefits

Competitive salary

Equity

Ownership in projects

Qualifications

• 5+ years of AI research with a proven track record of innovation.
• Strong engineering skills, particularly in optimizing AI systems.
• Commitment to continuous learning and technology trends.

Responsibilities

• Conduct research on AI architectures relevant to game development.
• Prototype and evaluate AI agents for development pipelines.
• Collaborate with production to identify important research directions.

Skills

AI research

ML

NLP

Engineering skills

Problem-solving

Education

Master / PhD in AI, ML, NLP

Tools

Neural networks

Graph neural networks

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.

Responsibilities

• 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 with production and engineering to identify important research directions that match our roadmap and turn research results into scalable, production-ready solutions.
• Staying 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

Qualifications

• 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

• Mid-Senior level

Employment type

• Full-time

Job function

• Engineering and Information Technology

Industries

• Technology, Information and Internet

Location: Montreal, Canada (Hybrid)