Research Scientist

About Oumi Why we exist: Oumi is on a mission to make frontier AI truly open for all. We are founded on the belief that AI will have a transformative impact on humanity, and that developing it collectively, in the open, is the best path forward to ensure that it is done efficiently and safely. By providing the safest, highest quality, and most flexible AI, we aspire to unlock positive impact for every individual, enterprise, and humanity overall. What we do: Oumi provides an end-to-end, AI-native platform to build custom AI models in hours, not months –automating the loop of evaluation, data synthesis, training, and repeat. Oumi also develops an open research stack and models in collaboration with academic collaborators and the open community. Our Approach: Oumi is built on a foundation of open source, with open collaboration at the heart of everything we do. Our work is: Research-driven: We conduct and publish original AI research, working closely with academic research labs and collaborators across the globe. Community-powered: We believe in the strength of open collaboration and actively welcome contributions from researchers and developers worldwide. Accessibility-focused: We design Oumi to help any organization—regardless of size or resources—effectively build, deploy, and benefit from AI by lowering barriers to access, experimentation, and adoption. Role Overview The Research Scientist will be an integral part of Oumi's research team, focusing on advancing the state-of-the-art in large language models (LLMs), vision language models (VLMs), and related technologies. This role involves conducting cutting-edge research, contributing to open-source projects, and collaborating with other researchers and engineers. Researchers at Oumi will work on various aspects of LLM/VLM development including training, evaluation, data curation, and benchmark development. What you’ll do: Model Development: Conduct research on training and evaluating new Large language models (LLMs), Vision Language Models (VLMs), and other AI models. This includes exploring new architectures, training techniques, and optimization methods. Data Curation: Develop methodologies for curating high-quality datasets for training and evaluating LLMs. This may involve data synthesis and other novel techniques. Benchmark Development: Develop evaluation benchmarks to measure the performance of LLMs across various tasks and domains. Research and Experimentation: Design and conduct experiments to validate research hypotheses and improve model performance. Open Source Contribution: Contribute to the Oumi open-source platform, models and projects, and other relevant tools and libraries. Collaboration: Collaborate with other researchers, engineers, and the broader community to advance the field of open-source AI. Publication: Publish research findings in leading conferences and journals. Platform Evaluation: Evaluate existing models and identify areas of improvement. Flexibility: Work with various models, including text and multimodal models, and both open and closed models. Problem Solving: Focus on the research that matters by skipping the plumbing and moving straight to research, building on the work of others and contributing back. What you’ll bring: Education: A Ph.D. or MSc. in computer science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or a related field is preferred. Candidates with a strong publication record, or equivalent industry experience will be considered. Research Experience: Demonstrated experience in conducting original research in machine learning, with a strong publication record in top-tier conferences or journals. ML Expertise: Deep understanding of machine learning and deep learning concepts, with specific knowledge of large language models (LLMs) and/or vision language models (VLMs). Programming Skills: Strong programming skills in Python and experience using deep learning frameworks (e.g. PyTorch). Open Source: Familiarity with open-source projects and a passion for contributing to the open-source community. Initiative: A self-starter who can work independently and take ownership of initiatives. Values: Share Oumi's values : Beneficial for all, Customer-obsessed, Radical Ownership, Exceptional Teammates, Science-grounded. Benefits Equity in a high-growth startup Comprehensive health, dental and vision insurance 21 days PTO Regular team offsites and events Location: Hybrid work environment, with offices in: San Mateo, CA Seattle, WA New York, NY