Principal Applied Scientist - LLM & Agentic AI Lead (Remote)

Zillow Group; United States; Remote; USD 196,000 - 312,000; Full time

Job summary

Zillow Group is seeking a Principal Applied Scientist to set the scientific direction for the large language models behind our AI assistant and to lead a team of scientists who build them. You will drive the research agenda, provide technical leadership, and translate research into product impact for millions of home shoppers.

You will collaborate with product, engineering, and data teams to advance post-training, reward modeling, and evaluation, delivering practical, production-ready

Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, ML, or related field, or a master's with equivalent research experience.
• Deep expertise in large language models or foundation models, including post-training (SFT, DPO, RLHF, RFT/GRPO), reward modeling, or LLM evaluation.
• A track record of leading others: managing teams of scientists or engineers, or leading a research group with publications.
• Ability to independently scope and solve ambiguous problems and influence technical direction across teams.
• Proficiency in Python and ML frameworks such as PyTorch, with the ability to read, debug, and guide experimental code.

Responsibilities

• Define the research agenda for LLM post-training, reward modeling, and evaluation of agentic systems.
• Lead and grow a group of applied scientists, providing technical direction, mentorship, and a high bar for scientific rigor.
• Drive ambiguous, high-impact problems end to end, from a product vision to the experiments, models, and data needed to get there.
• Translate state-of-the-art research in generative AI into practical improvements in a product used by millions of home shoppers.
• Communicate scientific strategy and results to executives and cross-functional partners.

Skills

Leadership

Ambiguity management

Python

PyTorch

Experimentation guidance

Education

PhD in Computer Science, ML, or related field (or master's with equivalent research experience)

Tools

PyTorch

Job description

Zillow Group is seeking a Principal Applied Scientist to set the scientific direction for the large language models behind our AI assistant and to lead a team of scientists who build them. You will drive the research agenda, provide technical leadership, and translate research into product impact for millions of home shoppers.

You will collaborate with product, engineering, and data teams to advance post-training, reward modeling, and evaluation, delivering practical, production-ready