Head of AI

Confidential

San Francisco, CA, USA
Permanent
Hybrid
Reinforcement LearningMultimodal Large Language ModelsAI Research Leadership

Head of AI (Confidential Search)

About the Company

We are pioneering advanced physical AI architectures at the intersection of multimodality, reinforcement learning, and physical systems. We operate in a highly collaborative, high-velocity environment and are looking for a visionary leader to define the next frontier of physical intelligence.

Role Overview

As the Head of AI, you will serve as both our chief scientific visionary and a hands-on researcher. You will lead, scale, and inspire our world-class research and engineering team from its current size to 20+ elite researchers and engineers. This is a rare, high-leverage leadership role for an eminent scientist who wants to remain technically hands-on while building a category-defining startup.

Key Responsibilities

  • Technical Vision & Strategy: Formulate and execute our long-term AI research roadmap, focusing on multimodality, reinforcement learning, and physical AI systems.
  • Team Leadership & Scaling: Recruit, mentor, and lead a world-class team of AI researchers and engineers, scaling the organization to 20+ individuals.
  • Hands-On Research: Lead by example by remaining actively involved in designing, training, and evaluating state-of-the-art foundational models.
  • Scientific Excellence: Maintain and foster a culture of rigorous scientific inquiry, keeping the team at the absolute forefront of machine learning breakthroughs.

Requirements

  • Eminent Pedigree: Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a closely related field from a top-tier academic institution.
  • Proven Track Record: An exceptional publication record (Google Scholar) at top-tier venues (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, RSS) and a history of working at globally recognized AI research labs or top-tier tech companies.
  • Deep Technical Expertise: Deep domain expertise in Reinforcement Learning, Large Language Models (LLMs), Multimodality, and/or Physical AI/Physical Systems.
  • Leadership Experience: Demonstrated capability to recruit, build, and scale high-performing research teams in a fast-paced environment.
  • Location: Based in or willing to relocate to the SF Bay Area to be in office 3+ days a week.