Director, Applied AI Research

Royal Bank of Canada•Toronto, ON

4d•Onsite

About The Position

RBC Borealis is looking for a Director to lead an applied AI group of machine learning researchers and research engineers in delivering cutting-edge generative AI solutions for the financial services industry. This team specializes in advanced LLM capabilities, including fine-tuning foundation models and frontier agentic system engineering. As a key member of our organization, you will provide strategic leadership and direction to drive the effectiveness of your team, enabling them to deliver high-value business outcomes through the application of state-of-the-art generative AI and LLM technologies.

Requirements

A Master's or Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, or a related technical field, or equivalent qualifications;
10+ years of experience in leading high-impact machine learning solutions in a product-centric environment, with demonstrated expertise in generative AI and LLM applications;
5+ years of experience managing high-performing teams of researchers, data scientists, and engineers to deliver machine learning projects and solutions;
Proven experience across the entire research and development lifecycle for LLM-based systems, from concept prototyping to production-ready solutions, with a strong ability to engage with stakeholders to understand business needs and develop tailored solutions;
At least one of the following: Published research on large language models, generative AI, or related topics at top-tier conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, or equivalent); Experience architecting and deploying production-grade agentic systems at scale, including sophisticated multi-agent orchestration, tool-use frameworks, and complex reasoning pipelines in enterprise environments; Equivalent demonstrable expertise in advancing the state-of-the-art in LLM capabilities through industry innovation;
Exceptional communication skills with the ability to translate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences;
Strong foundation in machine learning and NLP concepts, including deep understanding of transformer architectures, fine-tuning methodologies (LoRA, QLoRA, RLHF, etc.), prompt engineering, and agentic design patterns.

Responsibilities

Develop and productize innovative generative AI approaches and novel intellectual property, driving business impact through applied research in LLM fine-tuning, agentic harness engineering, and advanced system architectures;
Lead a team of researchers and research engineers who contribute to high-value AI solutions across multiple business initiatives, ensuring technical excellence and successful delivery;
Engage with business partners to define generative AI solutions that meet business needs, working closely with stakeholders to understand requirements and develop effective solutions leveraging large language models;
Provide technical leadership and scientific guidance to applied research projects focused on advancing LLM capabilities, collaborating with cross-functional teams to drive innovation in areas such as agentic system design, model fine-tuning and optimization, scalable deployment architectures, and performance optimization for latency, cost, and quality trade-offs;
Establish and promote Borealis as a thought leader in the field of generative AI and large language models, contributing to the company's reputation and visibility through publications, talks, and industry engagement.