Principal Applied Research Engineer/Generalist
Cupertino, California, United States Speculative Prototyping and Strategic Foresight Lab
A senior applied research role bridging prototypes and production: building end‑to‑end ML systems, rapidly iterating on model behavior, and translating research into product‑ready engineering.
You’ll work across model design, evaluation, tooling, and inference integration. The work is cross‑functional by default: hardware, software, and design stakeholders need runnable systems they can interrogate—not just papers.
- Track record shipping ML systems from idea to deployed prototype.
- Demonstrated ability to improve model capability through hands-on work.
- Advanced degree in a relevant field, or equivalent practical experience.
- Design and implement production-facing ML models and supporting infrastructure.
- Drive evaluation: data curation, test harnesses, and metrics that stakeholders can understand.
- Build optimized inference pathways suitable for real product constraints.
- Prototype quickly, then harden: iterate from “working demo” to “reliable subsystem.”
- Advocate for research directions with a clear path to user value.
- Deep expertise with transformer-based foundation models and multimodal systems.
- Experience with fine-tuning, optimization, and safety alignment practices.
- Experience building agentic systems: planning, tool use, and autonomy under constraints.
- Strong cross-functional communication and technical leadership.
In a near-future reading, roles like this are less about “model training” and more about organizational translation: making research legible to product decision-makers, and making product constraints legible to research.