Head of Applied AI Research & Systems

talp; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 320,000; Full time

Job summary

Talp, a simulation infrastructure company, is seeking an experienced leader to guide its scientific direction and turn research into working systems. You will oversee modeling, evaluation, and the infrastructure that supports experimentation and deployment.

This is a hands-on leadership role: design experiments, write code, inspect data, and build a research team in collaboration with engineering. Strong background in applied AI is essential.

Qualifications

• Strong track record in applied AI or ML research with production impact.
• Hands-on experience with language models and modern training techniques.
• Solid Python skills and familiarity with PyTorch or JAX.
• Ability to design and run rigorous experiments and benchmarks.
• Experience building research tooling and ML infrastructure.
• Leadership experience in research teams or programs.

Responsibilities

• Set the research direction and align experiments with product goals.
• Develop and improve models across data prep, adaptation, training, and fine-tuning.
• Define benchmarks to measure behavioral accuracy and usefulness.
• Build evaluation systems with traceable datasets and experiments.
• Collaborate with engineering on data pipelines and model serving.
• Grow and mentor a research team and establish rigorous standards.

Skills

Applied Research

Deep Models

Python

Statistical Judgment

Team Leadership

Research-to-Production

Autonomy

Tools

PyTorch

JAX

Job description

Talp, a simulation infrastructure company, is seeking an experienced leader to guide its scientific direction and turn research into working systems. You will oversee modeling, evaluation, and the infrastructure that supports experimentation and deployment.

This is a hands-on leadership role: design experiments, write code, inspect data, and build a research team in collaboration with engineering. Strong background in applied AI is essential.