Contract AI Researcher - Efficient AI

LG Electronics • Santa Clara, CA

22h • $84 - $91 • Hybrid

About The Position

LG's Emerging Technology Lab (ETL) is seeking a Contract AI Researcher - Efficient AI to join their team in Santa Clara, CA (hybrid). This role focuses on AI efficiency research, aiming to make modern LLMs, VLMs, multimodal models, and AI agents faster, smaller, and more deployable in real-world environments. The researcher will explore areas like model compression, quantization, efficient inference, reasoning optimization, and new AI architectures. The work will contribute to advanced AI capabilities in future LG products such as AI PCs, edge devices, robotics, and intelligent vehicle systems. The ideal candidate will bridge research and implementation, transforming scientific literature into working prototypes and measurable improvements. This position offers collaboration with experienced researchers, opportunities for publications and intellectual property contributions, and the chance to shape the future of efficient, on-device AI.

Requirements

• M.S. or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Machine Learning, Mathematics, or a related technical field.
• Research or engineering experience in ML, efficient AI, model optimization, or AI systems.
• Strong programming ability in Python and experience with PyTorch or a comparable deep learning framework.
• Hands-on experience with modern LLMs, SLMs, VLMs, multimodal models, or generative AI systems.
• Ability to read research papers, implement technical methods, run experiments, and communicate results clearly.
• Comfortable working in a fast-moving and ambiguous technical environment.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills for reports, presentations, demos, and technical documentation.

Nice To Haves

• Publications in reputable venues in ML and/or systems space (e.g., ICML, ICLR, NeurIPS, ACL, COLM, EMNLP, MLSys, MICRO, etc).
• Experience with modern LLM/VLM inference and deployment frameworks such as llama.cpp, GGUF, vLLM, SGLang, TensorRT-LLM, or related systems.
• Experience with efficiency-aware post-training or finetuning methods such as PTQ, QAT, LoRA, distillation, instruction tuning, DPO, OPD, RLVR, or reasoning-oriented adaptation.
• Experience with low-level kernel implementations and on-device acceleration.
• Familiarity with emerging architectures such as MoE, SSMs, hybrid attention, or Looped Transformers.
• Experience with AI-assisted optimization, multi-agent systems, or agentic-based workflows for Efficient AI and hardware/software co-design.

Responsibilities

• Research, prototype, and implement AI methods that improve model efficiency, inference performance, and deployment feasibility on constrained devices.
• Optimize modern LLMs, SLMs, VLMs, multimodal models, and agentic workloads across post-training, inference, and deployment workflows.
• Propose and evaluate novel compression methods (PTQ, QAT, pruning, low-rank approximation, etc) for on-device LLM/VLM enablement.
• Devise approaches to address challenges related to long-context inference and KV cache compression in the context of reasoning and agentic applications.
• Develop gradient-free and backpropagation-free methods for model merging, compression, and efficiency-driven optimization.
• Implement and evaluate emerging efficient architectures and modules, including MoE, SSMs, hybrid models, Looped Transformers, etc.
• Prototype inference-time optimization methods such as speculative decoding, constrained decoding, low-latency generation, and kernel-level optimization.
• Build experimental pipelines, perform evaluations on standardized language, vision, reasoning, and agentic benchmarks.
• Contribute to publications, technical reports, open-source releases, invention disclosures, and IP submissions where appropriate.

Benefits

• No-cost employee premiums for you and your eligible dependents for competitive medical, dental, vision and prescription benefits.
• Auto enrollment with immediate vesting of competitive company matching contributions in a 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan with several investment options.
• Generous Paid Time Off program that includes company holidays and a combined bank of paid sick and vacation time.
• Performance based Short-Term Incentives (varies by role).
• Access to confidential mental health resources to help you and your loved ones improve your quality of life.
• Personal fitness goal incentives.
• Family orientated benefits such as paid parental leave and support for families raising children with learning, social, behavioral challenges, or developmental disabilities.
• Group Rate Life and Disability Insurance.
• Eligible for the relevant benefit programs offered through our partner agencies.

What This Job Offers

• Career Level: Senior