Applied Researcher 5 (AI Foundations - LLM, Optimization and Finetuning)

Discover Financial
New York, Cambridge, Virginia, San Jose
Workplace: OnsiteFull timeUSD 286,400 - 326,800 annuallyFunction: Research & Scientific (R&D)Education: phdSkills: ["Innovation","Creativity","Leadership","Stakeholder collaboration","Communication"]

Partner with cross-functional teams to build AI-powered products for banking customers, leveraging a modern ML stack to uncover insights from large numeric and textual datasets. Own the full lifecycle of AI foundation model development—design, training, evaluation, validation, and deployment—while leading applied research that advances state-of-the-art LLM training optimization and fine-tuning into production-ready experiences.

Loading

Loading job details...

Preparing the role view and application actions.

FursaFursa
Discover Financial
Discover Financial
1 day ago

Applied Researcher 5 (AI Foundations - LLM, Optimization and Finetuning)

✓ Verified Job

Canonical indexed version, validated from employer's careers page.

Source: Company careers pageValidated by: Fursa AI
Last checked: 14 hours agoStatus: Live

Job Summary

Partner with cross-functional teams to build AI-powered products for banking customers, leveraging a modern ML stack to uncover insights from large numeric and textual datasets. Own the full lifecycle of AI foundation model development—design, training, evaluation, validation, and deployment—while leading applied research that advances state-of-the-art LLM training optimization and fine-tuning into production-ready experiences.
Location: New York, Cambridge, Virginia, San Jose
Workplace: Onsite
Employment Type: Full time
Job Function: Research & Scientific (R&D)
Seniority: Mid level

Key Responsibilities

  • •Partner with data scientists, software engineers, machine learning engineers, and product managers to deliver AI-powered products that change how customers interact with their money.
  • •Leverage a broad technology stack to extract insights from large volumes of numeric and textual data.
  • •Build AI foundation models across the full development lifecycle, from design through training, evaluation, validation, and implementation.
  • •Engage in high-impact applied research to push the latest AI developments into the next generation of customer experiences.
  • •Lead cross-functional research threads that bridge prototype model development and deployment with ML engineering partners.

Pay and Benefits

Salary: USD 286,400 - 326,800 annually
Perks:Health Insurance

Key Requirements

  • •PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, AI, Mathematics (or related) with the stated exception, or an MS with specified 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, including experience in areas such as training optimization, self-supervised learning, robustness, explainability, and RLHF.
  • •Experience building large deep learning models (e.g., language, images, events, graphs) and delivering models at scale for both training data and inference volumes.
  • •Track record of high-quality ML research and impact (e.g., first-author publications/projects) and ability to own a research agenda with long-running projects.
Experience:AIMachine learningDeep learningLarge language modelsNLPApplied research
Education:PhD / Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, AI, Mathematics (or related fields)
Skills:InnovationCreativityLeadershipStakeholder collaborationCommunication
Tech Stack:PyTorchAWS UltraclustersHuggingfaceLightningOpen-sourceCloud computingNLPLLMsRLHF

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