Research Scientist - Applied AI

Granica; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 160,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Flexible time off

Comprehensive health coverage

Support for research and publication

Job summary

An innovative AI research firm in San Francisco is seeking a Research Scientist focused on developing algorithms for structured AI. The role involves collaboration with leading researchers on projects to enhance representation learning and optimize data systems. Ideal candidates will hold a PhD and have experience with deep learning tools like PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow. This position offers a competitive compensation package, including equity and bonus opportunities, in a high-trust environment fostering innovation.

Qualifications

• Specialization in structured, tabular, or relational data modeling.
• Research experience in representation learning and generalization theory.
• Hands-on experience with systems optimization.

Responsibilities

• Invent algorithms for structured AI and representation learning.
• Develop adaptive learners for foundational models.
• Design architectures that reason over structured enterprise data.

Skills

PhD in Machine Learning, Statistics, or related fields

Strong grounding in information theory

Experience with deep learning frameworks

Proficiency in Python or Rust

Ability to translate theory into performance systems

Curiosity about structure in AI

Education

PhD

Tools

PyTorch

JAX

TensorFlow

Job description

Overview

Research Scientist - Mountain View, CA at Granica. This range is provided by Granica. Your actual pay will be based on your skills and experience — talk with your recruiter to learn more.

Base pay range

$160,000.00/yr - $250,000.00/yr

What Granica does

Granica is an AI research and systems company building the infrastructure for a new kind of intelligence: one that is structured, efficient, and deeply integrated with data. Our systems operate at exabyte scale, processing petabytes of data each day for some of the world’s most prominent enterprises in finance, technology, and industry. These systems are already making a measurable difference in how global organizations use data to deploy AI safely and efficiently.

We believe that the next generation of enterprise AI will not come from larger models but from more efficient data systems. By advancing the frontier of how data is represented, stored, and transformed, we aim to make large-scale intelligence creation sustainable and adaptive. Our long-term vision is Efficient Intelligence: AI that learns using fewer resources, generalizes from less data, and reasons through structure rather than scale. To reach that, we are first building the Foundational Data Systems that make structured AI possible.

The Mission: AI today is limited not only by model design but by the inefficiency of the data that feeds it. At scale, each redundant byte, each poorly organized dataset, and each inefficient data path slows progress and compounds into enormous cost, latency, and energy waste. Granica’s mission is to remove that inefficiency. We combine new research in information theory, probabilistic modeling, and distributed systems to design self-optimizing data infrastructure: systems that continuously improve how information is represented and used by AI. Granica’s Research group is led by Prof. Andrea Montanari (Stanford), bridging advances in information theory and learning efficiency with large-scale distributed systems. Together, we share a conviction that the next leap in AI will come from breakthroughs in efficient systems, not just larger models.

We are pioneering a new class of structured AI models: foundational models built to learn and reason from the world’s relational, tabular, and structured data. While others focus on unstructured text or media, we are exploring the next frontier: systems that understand and reason over the information that runs the global economy.

What you’ll build and research

• Invent and prototype algorithms that define the foundations of structured AI, advancing representation learning and efficient information modeling for enterprise and tabular data at petabyte scale.
• Develop adaptive learners that fuse statistical learning theory with large-scale systems optimization, contributing to a new generation of foundational models for structured information.
• Design architectures that integrate symbolic, relational, and neural components, enabling AI systems to reason directly over structured enterprise data.
• Build cost models and optimization frameworks that make structured learning efficient, both computationally and economically.
• Collaborate closely with the Granica Research group led by Prof. Andrea Montanari (Stanford) and with systems engineers to transform theoretical ideas into production-grade systems used across live enterprise workloads.
• Iterate fast: prototype new model architectures, evaluate on live datasets, and publish results that advance both theory and practice.
• Contribute to the global research community shaping the future of structured AI and efficient learning.

What you’ll bring

• PhD in Machine Learning, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, or a related field with specialization in structured, tabular, or relational data modeling.
• Research or applied work in areas such as representation learning, generalization theory, probabilistic modeling, or foundational models.
• Strong grounding in information theory, optimization, or statistical inference.
• Hands-on experience with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow, and proficiency in Python or Rust for large-scale experimentation.
• Demonstrated ability to translate theoretical ideas into performant, reliable systems.
• Curiosity about how structure and relational information can drive new forms of generalization and reasoning in AI.
• A pragmatic, impact-driven approach to research: you care about elegance, but you ship results that work at scale.

Bonus

• Research experience in structured representation learning, embeddings, or model architectures for tabular and multimodal data.
• Familiarity with distributed data systems, query engines, or large-scale learning infrastructure.
• Contributions to open-source projects or collaborative research bridging theory and production.

Why Granica

• Fundamental Research Meets Enterprise Impact. Work at the intersection of science and engineering, turning foundational research into deployed systems serving enterprise workloads at exabyte scale.
• AI by Design. Build the infrastructure that defines how efficiently the world can create and apply intelligence.
• Real Ownership. Design primitives that will underpin the next decade of AI infrastructure.
• High-Trust Environment. Deep technical work, minimal bureaucracy, shared mission.
• Enduring Horizon. Backed by NEA, Bain Capital, and various luminaries from tech and business. We are building a generational company for decades, not quarters or a product cycle.

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive salary, meaningful equity, and substantial bonus for top performers
• Flexible time off plus comprehensive health coverage for you and your family
• Support for research, publication, and deep technical exploration

Join us to build the foundational data systems that power the future of enterprise AI. At Granica, you will shape the fundamental infrastructure that makes intelligence itself efficient, structured, and enduring.

Compensation Range: $160K - $250K