Senior Researcher - Efficient Architecture for LLMs

Huawei Technologies Canada Co., Ltd.; Montreal; On-site; CAD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading technology firm in Montreal is seeking a Senior Researcher to advance research in large language models (LLMs). This role involves developing innovative research ideas, mentoring a team, and publishing findings in top-tier conferences. Ideal candidates should possess a Ph.D. and expertise in NLP and LLMs. Proficiency in Python and understanding of modern LLM architectures are essential. Knowledge of French is important, while English proficiency is also required for international communication.

Qualifications

• First-author publications in top-tier ML and NLP venues.
• Experience with modern LLM training and inference stacks.
• Familiar with transformer models and linear-attention models.

Responsibilities

• Propose and develop novel research ideas for LLMs.
• Participate in applied research projects on long-context LLMs.
• Deliver end-to-end projects with experiments and findings.

Skills

Deep understanding of NLP and LLM fundamentals

Strong programming skills in Python

Expertise in modern LLM architectures

Excellent oral and written communication skills

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field

Tools

PyTorch

Hugging Face Transformers

Job description

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

About the team:

Founded in 2012, the Noah’s Ark lab has evolved into a prominent research organization with notable achievements in academia and industry. The lab’s mission focuses on advancing artificial intelligence and related fields to benefit the company and society. Driven by impactful, long‑term projects, the aim is to enhance state‑of‑the‑art research while integrating innovations into the company's products and services, including LLMs, RL, NLP, computer vision, AI theory, and Autonomous driving.

About the job:

• Propose and develop novel research ideas to advance the state of the art in large language models (LLMs).

• Participate in applied research projects focused on enabling long‑context LLMs, including work on efficient architectures, data curation, and post‑training methods.

• Deliver end‑to‑end projects by designing and executing experiments, analyzing results, and presenting findings.

• Publish research in top‑tier machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) conferences.

• Supervise and mentor a small group of researchers and engineers to deliver projects and publish conference papers.

• Track advances across the LLM and AI ecosystem, translating new developments into actionable insights for the team.

About the ideal candidate:

• A Ph.D. in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.

• First‑author publications in top‑tier machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) venues such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, or NAACL.

• A deep understanding of NLP and large language model (LLM) fundamentals and state‑of‑the‑art methods, coupled with a strong theoretical grounding in machine learning.

• Expertise in modern LLM architectures, including transformer models (e.g., Llama, Qwen) and linear‑attention models (e.g., Mamba, GLA).

• Strong programming skills in Python with expertise in PyTorch.

• Experience with modern LLM training and inference stacks (e.g., Hugging Face Transformers/Accelerate, Megatron‑LM, vLLM).

• Excellent oral and written communication skills.

Language Requirements:

Huawei aims to support a French‑speaking work environment for its employees in Quebec. We have taken steps to avoid requiring a language other than French for this position. However, proficiency in English is essential for this role for the following reasons:

The person will be required to communicate regularly with colleagues located outside Quebec, where English is the primary language used for communication between offices. In addition, the nature of the tasks related to this position, which falls within a highly specialized field of artificial intelligence, also requires knowledge of English.