AI Vision Research Engineer Graduate (PICO) - 2026 Start (PhD)

ByteDance; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 122,574 - 316,800; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) savings plan with company match

Paid parental leave

Paid holidays and sick days

Long-term disability coverage

Wellbeing benefits

Job summary

ByteDance is looking for talented individuals for a future position in 2026 focused on developing innovative VR/AR technology. Successful candidates will work on building machine perception systems and optimizing ML algorithms for AI accelerators. This opportunity is ideal for current doctoral students or recent graduates in relevant technical fields, offering a competitive salary range of $122,574 to $316,800 annually. Benefits include comprehensive health coverage, paid time off, and other perks.

Qualifications

• Research experience in ML algorithms or AI accelerator design.
• Experience with programming tools and languages such as C/C++, MATLAB, Python.

Responsibilities

• Innovate and develop a power-efficient, low-latency vision system.
• Develop training and data collection pipeline with ML algorithms.
• Map ML algorithm to HW accelerator and optimize performance.
• Collaborate with the team to translate requirements into workloads.
• Perform evaluations through system modeling and prototyping.

Skills

Machine Learning

C/C++

MATLAB

Python

Education

Doctoral degree or recent graduate in Software Development, Computer Science, or related fields

Job description

About Team: PICO is a leading VR/AR platform with independent innovation and R&D capabilities, focusing on VR all-in-one technology. PICO is committed to offering immersive and interactive VR experiences to our customers, including providing tailor‑made solutions for our enterprise clients in the fields of education and healthcare.

We are looking for talented individuals to join us for this future position in 2026. As a graduate, you will get unparalleled opportunities to kickstart your career, pursue bold ideas and explore limitless growth opportunities. Co‑create a future driven by your inspiration with ByteDance. Successful candidates must be able to commit between January 5 2026 and December 14 2026.

Responsibilities

• Innovate and develop a power-efficient, low-latency, highly‑intelligent machine perception vision system in a VR/AR product.
• Develop necessary training, data collection/generation pipeline along with state‑of‑the‑art ML algorithm/framework for understanding the scene and user behaviors.
• Map the ML algorithm to the HW accelerator, identify performance bottleneck, optimize performance and efficiency, propose more efficient HW/SW co‑design for AI accelerator.
• Collaborate with the cross‑functional team and translate system requirements into a proper cloud‑edge workload partition and edge ML accelerator HW/SW requirement.
• Perform quantitative evaluations through the use of system modeling, FPGA prototyping for validating ideas and architecture options.

Minimum Qualifications

• Current doctoral students or recent graduates in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical fields.
• Research experience in ML algorithms or AI accelerator design.
• Experience with programming tools and languages such as C/C++, MATLAB, Python.

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with modern ML frameworks.
• Good communication skills, open‑mindedness, and enthusiasm for new technologies.

Job Information

【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually): The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $122,574 – $316,800 annually. Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies, and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work. This role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives and restricted stock units.

Benefits

Employees receive day‑one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short‑term and long‑term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year, and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure). The company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

Legal and Equal Opportunity

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Criminal history may be considered in the following duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:

• Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues.
• Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems.
• Exercising sound judgment.