Chief AI Research Product Leader

Via Transportation, Inc.; New York (NY); On-site; USD 250,000 - 310,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

401(k) match

Parental leave

PTO

Dental & Vision plans

Mental health benefits

Pet insurance

Wellness perks

Job summary

Via Transportation, Inc. is seeking a Head of AI Research Product to spearhead the fusion of applied ML research and product innovation across its rider and transit platform.

This role sits at the frontier of using AI to improve routing, dispatching, and network efficiency while maintaining equity and rider satisfaction. You will lead lighthouse pilots, build production-ready models, and collaborate with engineering, data science, and product teams to turn research into shipped features that

Qualifications

• Advanced degree in ML, OR, statistics, or related field.
• Hands-on proficiency in reinforcement learning and ML methods.
• Experience moving research into production at scale.

Responsibilities

• Lead AI research product function and define ML roadmap for rider experience and network performance.
• Design and deploy reinforcement learning systems for routing, pooling, and dispatching.
• Develop ensemble models balancing wait times, cost, emissions, and equity.
• Partner with lighthouse agencies to co-develop AI approaches and validate pilots.
• Establish experimentation infrastructure (A/B testing, contextual bandits, offline evaluation).
• Work with mobile/product teams to translate research into shipped features.

Skills

Reinforcement learning

ML research

Optimization

Monte Carlo Tree Search

Self-play

Production deployment

User empathy

Education

MS or PhD in quantitative field

Tools

Monte Carlo Tree Search

Self-play systems

Deep learning

Job description

Via Transportation, Inc. is seeking a Head of AI Research Product to spearhead the fusion of applied ML research and product innovation across its rider and transit platform.

This role sits at the frontier of using AI to improve routing, dispatching, and network efficiency while maintaining equity and rider satisfaction. You will lead lighthouse pilots, build production-ready models, and collaborate with engineering, data science, and product teams to turn research into shipped features that