Research Lead, Large Language Models

About the Role

We are looking for a hands-on Research Lead to own and advance a key technical area within our large language model team.

You will define the technical roadmap for your area, lead a focused team through complex research and engineering challenges, and work closely with other technical leaders to contribute to the broader evolution of our foundation models.

This is a specialized technical leadership role—not an organization-wide leadership position. We expect the successful candidate to remain deeply involved in research, experimentation, and implementation.

Key Responsibilities

Own the technical direction and roadmap for a core LLM area, such as pre-training, post-training, reasoning, agents, alignment, data, evaluation, or model architecture.

Lead a team in identifying and solving complex, high-impact research and engineering problems.

Drive end-to-end model iterations within the designated area, from problem definition and research hypotheses to large-scale experimentation, evaluation, and model integration.

Remain hands-on with algorithm design, experiment analysis, and critical engineering decisions.

Identify fundamental bottlenecks and develop technically rigorous solutions that meaningfully improve model capabilities.

Mentor team members, raise the technical bar, and foster a culture of ownership, open debate, and execution excellence.

Collaborate closely with other research, infrastructure, and product teams to ensure that technical advances translate into broader model improvements and real-world impact.

Qualifications

Deep expertise and a strong track record of breakthrough work in one or more areas of large language models.

Demonstrated experience leading a team or technical direction through difficult, open-ended problems.

Significant ownership of complete foundation model iterations, with a strong understanding of how research decisions affect data, training, evaluation, engineering, and deployment.

Exceptional command of both algorithmic principles and engineering implementation, with the ability to operate effectively from research ideas to large-scale systems.

Strong first-principles thinking and the ability to make clear technical judgments in uncertain and rapidly evolving environments.

A hands-on leadership style, high standards for technical rigor, and a strong sense of ownership.

A genuine passion for using technological advances to create meaningful change in the real world.

What We Value

Breakthrough thinking grounded in rigorous execution.

The ability to turn ambiguous problems into clear technical priorities.

Intellectual independence combined with strong collaboration.

Ownership from idea to measurable model improvement.

The ability to inspire and develop a small, high-caliber technical team.