Senior Researcher - AI Data Platforms

huaweicanada; Markham; On-site; CAD 127,000 - 225,000; Full time

Job summary

Huawei Canada is seeking a Senior Researcher to advance AI data storage and retrieval systems within the Emerging Storage Lab at the Toronto Research Centre. You will lead applied research across vector-native data lakes, RAG, and memory architectures, collaborating with engineers and researchers worldwide.

The ideal candidate holds a Ph.D. or Master’s in CS with publications in data management or storage systems, and has strong C/C++ and Python skills, experience with distributed storage APIs,

Qualifications

• Ph.D. or Master’s in CS with strong research background in data management, storage, or AI/ML infrastructure.
• Deep expertise in RAG, Agent memory, vector databases, or indexing tech with publications at top-tier conferences.
• Strong systems building and prototyping skills using C/C++ and Python; experience with distributed storage APIs and vector indexing libraries.
• Familiarity with data storage architectures (object stores, distributed file systems) and retrieval challenges including hybrid search and latency trade-offs.
• Excellent research communication skills bridging hardware, software, and AI disciplines and production-grade systems.

Responsibilities

• Conduct applied research on next-gen AI data storage and retrieval systems, including vector-native data lakes and intelligent caching.
• Pioneer research in Agent memory, Knowledge Bases, and RAG-optimized intelligence for hybrid search and real-time context.
• Design and implement data, metadata, and pipeline components with robust lineage, versioning, and lifecycle management.
• Collaborate with global research and engineering teams on architecture reviews, performance optimizations, and roadmap execution.
• Publish influential research at top-tier conferences and contribute to patents and industry forums.

Skills

C/C++

Python

Distributed systems

Data management

AI/ML infrastructure

Research communication

Education

PhD or Master’s in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Ray

Kubernetes

Slurm

FAISS

ScaNN

NVMe

RDMA

S3

HDFS

POSIX

Job description

Huawei Canada has an immediate permanent opening for a Senior Researcher.

About the team:

The Emerging Storage Lab is a research group based at Huawei Canada's Toronto Research Centre that is focused on next-generation data and storage technologies and innovations. Our team comprises graduate computer engineers and computer scientists with diverse industry experience, ranging from 0 to over 20 years. This lab investigates various data storage-related topics, including data management, data catalog, data fabric, file systems, storage networks, and AI storage, aiming to advance the field and drive data storage technological progress in the new AI era.

About the job:

• Conduct applied research on next-gen AI data storage and retrieval systems, including vector-native data lakes, intelligent caching, and high-performance RAG infrastructure.
• Pioneer research in Agent memory systems, Knowledge Bases, and RAG-optimized intelligence, driving innovation in hybrid search, dynamic indexing, chunking/parsing, and real-time context freshness at petabyte scale.
• Design and implement data, metadata, and pipeline components with robust lineage, versioning, and lifecycle management, prototyping unified architectures for file storage, data lakes, and vector indexes.
• Optimize the data plane for distributed shuffling, fast checkpointing, model/KV Cache loading/offloading, and low-latency metadata serving for billion-scale entities.
• Develop system software integrating AI storage, data preparation, and orchestration frameworks (Ray, Kubernetes, Slurm), eliminating bottlenecks from curation to serving.
• Optimize end-to-end data paths from persistent storage to compute nodes, leveraging NVMe, RDMA, networking, prefetching, and async I/O to meet enterprise AI demands.
• Publish influential research on Agent Memory, RAG, and AI-native data management at top-tier conferences, and contribute to patents and industry forums.
• Collaborate with global research and engineering teams on architecture reviews, performance optimizations, and execution of the strategic roadmap.

The total target annual compensation for this position ranges from $127,000 - $225,000 depending on education, experience, and demonstrated expertise.

About the ideal candidate:

• Ph.D. or Master's in Computer Science or related field, with a strong research background in data management, information retrieval, storage systems, or AI/ML infrastructure.
• Deep research expertise in RAG, Agent memory, vector databases, or indexing technologies, demonstrated through first-author publications at top-tier conferences.
• Strong systems building and prototyping skills, with proficiency in C/C++ and Python, and experience with distributed storage APIs (S3, HDFS, POSIX), data processing frameworks, or vector indexing libraries (FAISS, ScaNN).
• Solid understanding of data storage architectures (object stores, distributed file systems, caching layers) and retrieval challenges including hybrid search, index freshness, and cost/latency trade-offs between dense and sparse methods.
• Familiarity with AI/ML development lifecycles, including data drift, distributed data loading, LLM pre-training vs. fine-tuning, and advanced RAG techniques (HyDE, Multi-Query, Contextual Compression).
• Excellent research communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex ideas across hardware, software, and AI disciplines, and a strong desire to bridge academic research with production-grade systems.

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.