Applied Researcher II

Discover Financial
San Jose, San Francisco, Cambridge, New York
Workplace: OnsiteFull timeUSD 286,400 - 326,800 annuallyFunction: Research & Scientific (R&D)Experience: 2+ yearsEducation: phdSkills: ["Interpersonal communication","Leadership","Innovation","Creativity","Owning research agenda"]

Build and advance AI foundation models for customer-facing banking experiences, partnering with cross-functional data scientists, software engineers, and product managers. Apply state-of-the-art research through the full model lifecycle—design, training, evaluation, validation, and implementation—using technologies such as PyTorch, AWS Ultraclusters, Hugging Face, Lightning, and VectorDBs. Translate technical work into business outcomes while pushing next-generation customer experiences.

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FursaFursa
Discover Financial
Discover Financial
3 weeks ago

Applied Researcher II

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Last checked: 3 hours agoStatus: Live

Job Summary

Build and advance AI foundation models for customer-facing banking experiences, partnering with cross-functional data scientists, software engineers, and product managers. Apply state-of-the-art research through the full model lifecycle—design, training, evaluation, validation, and implementation—using technologies such as PyTorch, AWS Ultraclusters, Hugging Face, Lightning, and VectorDBs. Translate technical work into business outcomes while pushing next-generation customer experiences.
Location: San Jose, San Francisco, Cambridge, New York
Workplace: Onsite
Employment Type: Full time
Job Function: Research & Scientific (R&D)
Seniority: Mid level

Key Responsibilities

  • •Partner with cross-functional teams to deliver AI-powered products that improve how customers interact with their money.
  • •Use a broad technology stack (PyTorch, AWS Ultraclusters, Hugging Face, Lightning, VectorDBs, and more) to extract insights from large numeric and textual datasets.
  • •Develop AI foundation models across design, training, evaluation, validation, and implementation.
  • •Conduct high-impact applied research that translates the latest AI developments into next-generation customer experiences.
  • •Translate the complexity of research work into tangible business goals through stakeholder communication.

Pay and Benefits

Salary: USD 286,400 - 326,800 annually

Key Requirements

  • •Have, or be in the process of obtaining, a PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, AI, Mathematics, or a related field (or an M.S. with the required additional applied research experience).
  • •Hands-on experience developing AI foundation models and solutions using open-source tools and cloud computing platforms.
  • •Deep understanding of AI methodologies and experience building large deep learning models across language, images, events, or graphs.
  • •Expertise in one or more areas such as training optimization, self-supervised learning, robustness, explainability, or RLHF.
  • •Experience delivering libraries, platform-level code, or solution-level code to existing products and building models at scale for both training data and inference volumes.
Experience:2+ yearsApplied researchMachine learningDeep learningLLMsOpen sourceCloud computing
Education:PhD / Doctorate
Skills:Interpersonal communicationLeadershipInnovationCreativityOwning research agenda
Tech Stack:PyTorchAWSHugging FaceLightningVectorDBsPytorch-geometricDGL

Eligibility

Work Authorization:Sponsorship available.

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