Senior Machine Learning Research Engineer

AI Talent Now; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

AI Talent Now, LLC in San Francisco, CA, is seeking a Senior Machine Learning Research Engineer to own the full lifecycle of ML research and development for speech and audio models. You will design, train, deploy, and fine-tune state-of-the-art systems with end-to-end ownership.

The ideal candidate has 5+ years of ML research experience (PhD + postdoc or equivalent), a strong publication record at NeurIPS/ICML/ICLR, and deep Python/PyTorch production deployment expertise. In-office role in SF.

Qualifications

• PhD from a top CS program or 5+ years of industry ML research.
• 5-15 years ML research experience focused on speech/audio/multimodal models.
• Strong Python and PyTorch with production deployment experience.
• Based in or willing to relocate to San Francisco (in-office).
• Proven track record publishing at NeurIPS, ICML, or ICLR.

Responsibilities

• Own full research directions end-to-end — designing, training, deploying, and fine-tuning ML models for speech and audio.
• Publish and advance the state of the art in speech, audio, and multimodal ML (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR caliber work).
• Build production-grade inference systems and resilient pipelines processing terabytes of audio data daily.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with operations and engineering to gather training/evaluation datasets and improve model quality.
• Set ML roadmaps and mentor other engineers as the team scales.

Skills

ML research

Speech/audio modelling

Multimodal ML

Python programming

PyTorch

Production deployment

End-to-end ownership

Publication track record

Education

PhD in Computer Science or related field

5+ years industry ML research without PhD

Tools

PyTorch

Job description

Senior Machine Learning Research Engineer

San Francisco, United States | Posted on 09/03/2026

AI Talent Now, LLC is a powerhouse in direct-hire talent acquisition, connecting exceptional talent with industry-leading organizations across IT, Engineering, Financial Services & Fintech, and Manufacturing & Robotics. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, we proudly serve clients and candidates nationwide.

Job Description

AI Talent Now job # ZR 104

We are looking for a Machine Learning Research Engineer with 5+ years of experience (PhD + 1 year industry, or 5 years industry with publications) to own the full lifecycle of ML research and development at the frontier of audio AI. You'll join a fast-growing team backed by NVIDIA and top-tier investors, building cutting-edge speech and audio models that power the data layer for the world's leading AI labs. This is a role for someone who thrives in a research-driven environment, has published at top conferences, and is excited to take end-to-end ownership of novel ML directions — from design and training to deployment and fine-tuning.

What will you be doing?

• Owning full research directions end-to-end — designing, training, deploying, and fine-tuning ML models for speech and audio applications
• Publishing and advancing the state of the art in speech, audio, and multimodal ML (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR caliber work)
• Building production-grade inference systems and resilient pipelines that process terabytes of audio data daily
• Collaborating cross-functionally with operations and engineering teams to gather training/evaluation datasets and improve model quality
• Setting ML roadmaps and mentoring other engineers as the team scales

Requirements

• Must have
• 1+ years in industry with full lifecycle ML ownership: design, train, deploy, fine-tune
• Education:
• PhD from a top-25 CS program (or 5+ years industry ML research experience without PhD)
• Baseline
• Seniority:
• 5 - 15 years of experience in ML research engineering, with focus on speech/audio/multimodal models using Python and PyTorch
• Experience at a high-growth startup
• Research in speech, audio, multimodal, text-to-speech, or related domains
• Strong Python and PyTorch with production deployment experience
• Excited to own a research direction end-to-end independently
• Based in or willing to relocate to San Francisco (in-office)
• At least 1 year of industry experience (post-PhD)
• Nice-to-have
• Experience at a top AI lab or research-focused startup (e.g., DeepMind, xAI, Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta FAIR)
• Mix of big company and startup experience
• Education
• Many publications, especially at NeurIPS, ICML, or ICLR in speech, audio, multimodal, or related areas
• Many publications, especially at NeurIPS, ICML, or ICLR in speech, audio, multimodal, or related areas
• Updated
• Experience training large neural network models