Applied Researcher I (AI Foundations, VLM)

Discover Financial
New York, San Francisco, Virginia, Cambridge, San Jose
Full timeUSD 238,600 - 272,300 annuallyFunction: Research & Scientific (R&D)Education: phdSkills: ["Translate complexity into business goals","Innovative research","Creativity","Stakeholder collaboration","Own and pursue a research agenda"]

Partner with data scientists, software and machine learning engineers, and product managers to deliver AI-powered products. Build and evaluate AI foundation models end-to-end—design, training, validation, and implementation—while translating complex research into business goals. Leverage tools and platforms such as PyTorch, AWS Ultraclusters, Hugging Face, Lightning, and VectorDBs to push state-of-the-art advances into next-generation customer experiences.

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Discover Financial
Discover Financial
4 days ago

Applied Researcher I (AI Foundations, VLM)

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Last checked: 17 hours agoStatus: Live

Job Summary

Partner with data scientists, software and machine learning engineers, and product managers to deliver AI-powered products. Build and evaluate AI foundation models end-to-end—design, training, validation, and implementation—while translating complex research into business goals. Leverage tools and platforms such as PyTorch, AWS Ultraclusters, Hugging Face, Lightning, and VectorDBs to push state-of-the-art advances into next-generation customer experiences.
Location: New York, San Francisco, Virginia, Cambridge, San Jose
Employment Type: Full time
Job Function: Research & Scientific (R&D)
Seniority: Entry level

Key Responsibilities

  • •Partner with a cross-functional team to deliver AI-powered products that improve customer interactions with their money.
  • •Leverage a broad technology stack to extract insights from large volumes of numeric and textual data.
  • •Build AI foundation models across development phases: design, training, evaluation, validation, and implementation.
  • •Conduct high-impact applied research to translate emerging AI advances into next-generation customer experiences.
  • •Communicate research complexity in a way that aligns with tangible business goals.

Pay and Benefits

Salary: USD 238,600 - 272,300 annually

Key Requirements

  • •Currently has, or is in the process of obtaining, a PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, AI, Mathematics, or a related field (or an M.S. plus 2 years of Applied Research, with degree obtained by the scheduled start date).
  • •Hands-on experience developing AI foundation models and solutions using open-source tools and cloud computing platforms.
  • •A deep understanding of the foundations of AI methodologies.
  • •Experience building large deep learning models (e.g., language, images, events, or graphs) and expertise in areas such as training optimization, self-supervised learning, robustness, explainability, or RLHF.
  • •Track record of delivering models at scale across both training data and inference volumes, including experience deploying libraries/platform or solution-level code to existing products.
Education:PhD / Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, AI, Mathematics, or related fields
Skills:Translate complexity into business goalsInnovative researchCreativityStakeholder collaborationOwn and pursue a research agenda
Tech Stack:PyTorchAWSAWS UltraclustersHuggingfaceLightningVectorDBsOpen-sourceLLMNLPSelf-supervised learningRLHFQuantizationTraining parallelismModel compressionCompiler design

Company Brief

Discover Financial
Provides consumer banking products, credit cards, personal loans, and payment services through the Discover brand. It operates a major U.S. financial network and serves individuals and merchants with lending and digital payment solutions.
Industry: Retail Banking
Company Size: Enterprise (1,001+ employees)
Revenue: USD 10M to 25M
Growth: Public Company
Valuation: Public Company (Market Cap in USD)
Funding: IPO / Publicly Listed
Headquarters: Riverwoods, United States
Founded: 1985
WebsiteLinkedIn