Lead AI Research Scientist

Workato•San Francisco, CA

22h•Onsite

About The Position

Workato delivers enterprise infrastructure for the agentic era, redefining iPaaS and helping enterprises unify data, applications, processes, and AI into a single, governed platform. A leader in Enterprise MCP and trusted by 50% of the Fortune 500, Workato’s cloud-native architecture connects every application, data source, and process to power real-time orchestration at scale. With enterprise-grade security and continuous innovation at its core, Workato provides the trusted foundation for organizations to automate with confidence and operationalize AI across the business. Workato believes in fostering a flexible, trust-oriented culture that empowers everyone to take full ownership of their roles. We are driven by innovation and looking for team players who want to actively build our company. But, we also believe in balancing productivity with self-care. That’s why we offer all of our employees a vibrant and dynamic work environment along with a multitude of benefits they can enjoy inside and outside of their work lives.

Requirements

MS/PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field.
5+ years leading applied research teams.
Hands-on experience with PyTorch or JAX and modern LLM frameworks.
Proven track record of transitioning research into production within large-scale systems.
Strong publication record in top-tier ML venues (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR).
Hands-on experience with large-scale model training, transformer architectures, reinforcement learning techniques, and CUDA.
Deep expertise across structured and unstructured enterprise data modalities.
Clear communicator able to translate complex research into business value.
Ability to explain complex ideas to non-experts.
Inspirational leader who attracts, mentors, and retains top talent.
Comfortable making decisions in a fast-moving, on-site lab environment.
Collaborative mindset; thrives at the intersection of research and product.
Experience operating in high-growth startup environments.

Responsibilities

Set and execute a 24-month research vision spanning deterministic planners, self-healing automations, retrieval-augmented workflow graphs, and agent evaluation frameworks, while ensuring these innovations translate into real-world impact.
Build, lead, and mentor a team of applied researchers and interns, fostering a culture of technical excellence, strong authorship, and open scientific contribution.
Define and drive forward-looking research initiatives while bridging the gap between cutting-edge innovation and production-ready enterprise solutions.
Partner closely with Product and Engineering teams to productionize prototypes within six months of proof of concept.
Engage directly with lighthouse customers to validate ideas and convert insights into scalable reference architectures.
Define a 24-month research roadmap focused on automated agent building and optimization, goal-based agent design, synthetic data, automated post-training and RL, eval techniques, and model optimization.
Hire, coach, and inspire a team of 10+ applied researchers and interns; fostering a publication-quality bar and culture of open science.
Publish peer-reviewed papers and secure patents that differentiate Workato in enterprise AI.
Partner with Product and Engineering to productionize prototypes within six months of proof of concept.
Engage lighthouse customers to validate research and convert learnings into reference architectures.