Lead AI Researcher

Opus; Mountain View (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

OpusClip is seeking a hands-on Lead AI Researcher to drive production ML at scale, with strong depth in model post-training, evaluation, and feedback-driven improvement. You will mentor engineers, define the technical roadmap, and balance performance with infra costs.

Based in Mountain View, CA, you will apply LLMs and multimodal models to video tasks like highlight detection and content curation, influencing product decisions and roadmap.

Qualifications

• Proven experience shipping AI/ML models from prototype to production at scale.
• Expertise in model post-training, fine-tuning, and learning from user feedback.
• Experience building data flywheels turning feedback into training data.
• Inference optimization experience for self-hosted models including latency and cost.
• Strong evaluation skills: offline benchmarks, online experiments, product metrics.
• Applied LLMs or multimodal models to video applications (highlight detection, ranking, editing).
• Familiarity with video models: vision-language, ASR, video understanding and upscaling.
• Able to decide build-vs-buy across APIs, open-source, and internal models.
• Capable of setting roadmap, mentoring engineers, and leading a small AI team.
• Product-focused: balance model quality, latency, reliability, and infra cost.

Responsibilities

• Lead AI research initiatives from ideation to deployment at scale.
• Mentor engineers and manage a small high-performing AI team.
• Define technical roadmap and review architecture and systems.
• Balance quality, latency, reliability, and costs in production.
• Apply AI/ML to video workflows such as curation and editing decisions.

Skills

Production ML

Model evaluation

Inference optimization

Roadmap planning

Team leadership

Product-focused

Tools

Self-hosted models

GPU optimization

Quantization

Vision-language models

ASR/transcription

Job description

OpusClip is the world's No.1 AI video agent, built for authenticity on social media.

We envision a world where everyone can authentically share their story through video, with no expertise needed. Within just 18 months of our launch, over 10 million creators and businesses have used OpusClip to enhance their social presence.

We have raised $50 million in total funding and are fortunate to have some of the most supportive investors, including SoftBank Vision Fund, DCM Ventures, Millennium New Horizons, Fellows Fund, AI Grant, Jason Lemkin (SaaStr), Samsung Next, GTMfund, Alumni Ventures, and many more.

Check out our latest coverage by Business Insider featuring our product and funding milestones, and our recognition as one of The Information's 50 Most Promising Startups in 2024.

Headquartered in Mountain View, we are a team of 100 passionate and experienced AI enthusiasts and video experts, driven by our core values:

• Be a Champion Team
• Prioritize Ruthlessly
• Ship fast, Quality Follows
• Obsess over customers

Be a part of this exciting journey with us!

We want to hire a hands-on Lead AI Researcher with strong technical depth and people management is only a PLUS!

What we are looking for

• Proven experience shipping AI/ML models from prototype to production at scale.
• Deep expertise in model post-training, including fine-tuning, preference optimization, evaluation, and learning from user feedback. Experience building data flywheels that turn user behavior and feedback into training data and continuous model improvements.
• Strong inference optimization experience for self-hosted models, including latency, throughput, GPU utilization, quantization, and serving cost.
• Strong model evaluation skills, including offline benchmarks, human evaluation, online experiments, and product-quality metrics.
• Practical experience applying LLMs or multimodal models to video applications, such as highlight detection, content curation, ranking, personalization, and editing decisions.
• Familiarity with video-related models and systems, including but not limited to vision-language models, ASR/transcription, video understanding, and enhancement/upscaling, etc..
• Able to make build-vs-buy decisions across proprietary APIs, open-source models, and internally trained models.
• Capable of setting the technical roadmap, reviewing architecture, mentoring engineers, and managing a small high-performing AI team.
• Product-oriented and pragmatic: understands how to balance model quality, latency, reliability, and infrastructure cost.

Nice to have

• Experience with consumer video, creator tools, recommendation/content systems, or other high-scale multimodal products is plus.
• Distributed training infrastructure and inference optimization experience for self-hosted models: including latency, throughput, GPU utilization, quantization, and serving cost.
• Familiarity with video-related models and systems: vision-language models, ASR/transcription, video understanding/reasoning/generation, and enhancement/upscaling

EEO

OpusClip is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. OpusClip considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Opus Clip is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures.