Research Scientist: Multimodal Vision–Language Models

Mecka; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 185,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Mecka AI in San Francisco is seeking an experienced Research Scientist to advance large-scale multimodal foundation models. You will tackle research problems across model training, post-training, reinforcement learning, and multimodal reasoning, translating breakthroughs into practical capabilities.

You will work across the model development lifecycle from data strategies to evaluation, leveraging distributed training and open-weight models to push state-of-the-art in vision-language

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience researching, training, fine-tuning, or post-training large-scale foundation models, particularly vision-language or multimodal models.
• Strong understanding of deep learning architectures, optimization techniques, and modern model training methodologies.
• Experience with supervised fine-tuning (SFT), preference optimization, or reinforcement learning approaches such as DPO, GRPO, PPO, or RLHF.

Responsibilities

• Multimodal Model Research: Research, develop, and improve vision-language models and multimodal foundation-model architectures.
• Post-Training & Reinforcement Learning: Design and implement advanced training strategies, including supervised fine-tuning, preference optimization, and reinforcement learning, to improve model capabilities.
• Model Performance & Optimization: Investigate approaches to improve reasoning, generalization, reliability, and training efficiency.
• Data Quality & Training: Develop strategies for data curation, filtering, and synthetic data generation to improve training outcomes.
• Evaluation & Benchmarking: Design experiments, evaluation frameworks, and benchmarks to measure model performance, identify failure modes, and guide research priorities.
• Large-Scale Experimentation: Work with distributed training infrastructure and large-scale datasets to support research and model development.
• Research Innovation: Explore emerging approaches in multimodal learning, model alignment, and foundation-model training.

Skills

Vision-language research

Multimodal learning

Deep learning

Research instincts

Experiment design

Independent project leadership

Tools

PyTorch

JAX

Job description

Mecka AI in San Francisco is seeking an experienced Research Scientist to advance large-scale multimodal foundation models. You will tackle research problems across model training, post-training, reinforcement learning, and multimodal reasoning, translating breakthroughs into practical capabilities.

You will work across the model development lifecycle from data strategies to evaluation, leveraging distributed training and open-weight models to push state-of-the-art in vision-language