Research Engineer PRIOR

Persons in these roles are expected to work from our offices in Seattle.

Our base salary range is $118800 $178200 and in addition we have generous bonus plans to provide a competitive compensation package.

Who You Are:

As a Research Engineer on our team youll have the unique opportunity to work on research problems that can improve the vision and multimodal models contribute to the development of completely open foundation models and experiment with mobile robots in the real world. You will contribute to projects similar to our recent Molmo model release next hire will also help us build infrastructure one of the two: 1 the next generation of multimodal language models and digital agents or 2 simulation infrastructure for mobile robotics and realworld mobile robots. Were looking for someone with experience working with opensource projects deep knowledge of Python and a strong understanding of modern deep learning computer vision and some natural language processing.

We are looking for applicants interested in computer vision natural language processing machine learning robotics agents and/or embodied AI. International candidates are welcome to apply. Pay is competitive and visa sponsorship is available.

We collaborate frequently with researchers and engineers on other Ai2 teams focused on natural language processing and HCI among others. Our main office has close ties and unique access to researchers at the University of Washington only 1.5 miles away. Engineers excited about such internal and external collaborations are encouraged to apply.

Research Engineers in the PRIOR team will work on multiple exciting research projects in the above areas. They will also have the opportunity to contribute and engage in a variety of other activities critical to our research and mission. These include opportunities to lead select projects author and present scientific papers and presentations for peerreviewed journals and conferences and collaborate with researchers at other organizations including universities.

Who We Are:

Ai2s Perceptual Reasoning and Interaction Research team PRIOR is looking for strong researchers to join our team. PRIOR seeks to advance computer vision to create AI systems that see explore learn reason and interact with the world.

As a research scientist in the PRIOR team you will have the opportunity to work in a variety of research areas including:

• Embodied AI / Robotics Enable agents that safely navigate manipulate objects and follow instructions in simulation and in the real world (w/ real robots).
• Language & Vision Make vision and language models more general efficient and capable.

Agents Develop multimodal agents that automate real user tasks.

• AI for Common Good Apply AI to help address global challenges such as climate change illegal fishing and wildlife poaching
• Open source projects Make substantial contributions to the tools needed for robust reproducible and distributed experimentation (including AllenAct framework for Embodied AI Ai2THOR

We regularly publish in highprofile conferences and journals in computer vision (CVPR ICCV ECCV) robotics (CoRL RSS IROS ICRA) machine learning (e.g. NeurIPS ICLR) NLP (e.g. ACL EMNLP) amongst other areas.

Your Next Challenge:

The essential functions include but are not limited to the following:

• Building infrastructure to facilitate the next generation of LLM research.
• Optimizing training and inference for language models.
• Developing infrastructure to deduplicate and analyze datasets at scale.
• Triaging between experiments and executing on the most impactful.
• Supporting and collaborating with an opensource community.
• Bridging the gap between cuttingedge research and a widely adopted product.
• Using software engineering best practices in a research environment.

What Youll Need:

• Knowledge of modern deep learning and natural language processing techniques.
• Strong software engineering skills particularly around building performant systems and debugging.
• Experience with Python and PyTorch.
• Familiarity with software using container technologies (e.g. Docker) to deploy webbased services.

Education/experience

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science or relevant engineering experience.
• A minimum of 2 years of software development experience.

Physical Demands and Work Environment:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by a team member to successfully perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the functions.

• Occasionally required to remain seated in a normal position for long periods of time.
• While performing the duties of this job the employee routinely is required to sit; walk; talk and hear; use hands to keyboard handle and feel; stoop kneel crouch twist crawl reach and stretch.
• The employee is occasionally required to move short distances.
• Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision color vision peripheral vision depth perception and ability to adjust focus.
• Can work under deadlines.

Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the functions.

A Little More About Ai2:

The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence is a nonprofit research institute in Seattle founded by Paul Allen. The core mission of Ai2 is to contribute to humanity through highimpact research in artificial intelligence.

In addition to Ai2s core mission we also aim to contribute to humanity through our treatment of each member of the Ai2 Team. Some highlights are:

• We are a learning organization because everything Ai2 does is groundbreaking we are learning every day. Similarly through weekly Ai2 Academy lectures a wide variety of worldclass AI experts as guest speakers and our commitment to your personal ongoing education Ai2 is a place where you will have opportunities to continue learning alongside your coworkers.
• We value diversity We seek to hire support and promote people from all genders ethnicities and all levels of experience regardless of age. We particularly encourage applications from women nonbinary individuals people of color members of the LGBTQA community and people with disabilities of any kind.
• We value inclusion We understand the value that peoples individual experiences and perspectives can bring to an organization and we are building a culture in which all voices are heard respected and considered.
• We emphasize a healthy work/life balance we believe our team members are happiest and most productive when their work/life balance is optimized. While we value powerful research results which drive our mission forward we also value dinner with family weekend time and vacation time. We offer generous paid vacation and sick leave as well as family leave.
• We are collaborative and transparent we consider ourselves a team all moving with a common purpose. We are quick to cheer our successes and even quicker to share and jointly problem solve our failures.
• We are in Seattle and our office is on the water! We have mountains we have lakes we have four seasons we bike to work we have a vibrant theater scene and we have so much else. We even have kayaks for you to paddle right outside our front door. We welcome interest from applicants from outside of the United States.
• We are friendly chances are you will like every one of the 200 (and growing) people who work here. We do.

Ai2 is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race religion color national origin sex (including pregnancy childbirth or related medical conditions) sexual orientation gender gender identity gender expression transgender status sexual stereotypes age status as a protected veteran status as an individual with a disability or other applicable legally protected characteristics. You may view the related Know Your Rights compliance poster and the Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination Provision by clicking on their corresponding links.

This employer participates in EVerify and will provide the federal government with your Form I9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S. If EVerify cannot confirm that you are authorized to work this employer is required to give you written instructions and an opportunity to contact the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Social Security Administration (SSA) so you can begin to resolve the issue before the employer can take any action against you including terminating your employment. Employers can only use EVerify once you have accepted a job offer and completed the Form I9.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to employees and applicants with disabilities to the full extent required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). If you feel you need a reasonable accommodation pursuant to the ADA you are encouraged to contact us at .

Benefits:

• Team members and their families are covered by medical dental vision basic life insurance basic accidental death and dismemberment insurance shortterm disability longterm disability and an employee assistance program.
• Team members are able to enroll in our voluntary life insurance program our voluntary accidental death and dismemberment program our health savings account plan our healthcare reimbursement arrangement plan and our health care and dependent care flexible spending account plans.
• Team members are able to enroll in our companys 401k plan.
• Team members will receive $125 per month to assist with commuting or internet expenses and will also receive $200 per month for fitness and wellbeing expenses.
• Team members will also receive up to ten sick days per year up to seven personal days per year up to 20 vacation days per year and twelve paid holidays throughout the calendar year.
• Team members will be able to receive annual bonuses and can participate in the longterm incentive plan.

Note: This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by the team members(s) of this position. Team members will be required to follow any other jobrelated instructions and to perform any other jobrelated duties requested by any person authorized to give instructions or assignments. All duties and responsibilities are essential functions and requirements and are subject to possible modification to reasonably accommodate individuals with disabilities. To perform this job successfully the team member(s) will possess the skills aptitudes and abilities to perform each duty proficiently. Some requirements may exclude individuals who pose a direct threat or significant risk to the health or safety of themselves or others. The requirements listed in this document are the minimum levels of knowledge skills or abilities. This document does not create an employment contract implied or otherwise other than an at will relationship.