Research Scientist - Salesforce AI Research

Salesforce•Palo Alto, CA

1d•$137,100 - $276,100

About The Position

Salesforce AI Research seeks entrepreneurial Research Scientists to advance Enterprise AI by identifying high-impact research directions, prototyping AI capabilities, validating ideas with customers, and bringing promising concepts into production. The role combines independent research with product development and customer engagement, with opportunities to propose and incubate research ideas and use Salesforce’s product and customer ecosystem to validate innovations. The team works across research, product, engineering, and go-to-market functions, and contributes to leading AI conferences, open-source research, and academic collaborations. This role is open only to prior Salesforce interns; applicants who do not meet this criterion will not be considered.

Requirements

This role is open only to prior Salesforce interns.
A strong publication record at top AI venues (e.g., NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, CVPR, ICCV, ACL, EMNLP) and/or a proven track record of shipping AI research into real-world products.
Experience with Python and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, or DeepSpeed.
Motivation to deliver real-world impact by bringing research to users at scale.
Demonstrated expertise in one or more core areas: agentic AI and reasoning; multimodal AI and computer vision; speech intelligence; or core modeling and post-training.
Demonstrated ability to conduct independent research and translate ideas into impactful systems.

Nice To Haves

Ph.D. in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a related technical field, or equivalent full-time industry experience in deep learning research or product.
Experience building and scaling ML models for real-world business applications.
Experience mentoring and advising other researchers.
Strong programming skills, such as competitive programming (e.g., ACM-ICPC) or open-source experience.
Thoughtfulness about responsible AI, trust, and the real-world impact of systems built.
Excellent problem-solving ability, including tackling unsolved challenges.
Excellent written and spoken communication skills.
Track record of cultivating strong working relationships and driving cross-functional collaboration.

Responsibilities

Identify research directions with the potential to transform Enterprise AI.
Turn promising ideas into zero-to-one AI product prototypes.
Work directly with customers to validate needs, test solutions, and refine product direction.
Build robust models, agents, and AI systems for real-world enterprise use.
Partner with product, engineering, and go-to-market teams to bring solutions to market.
Conduct independent research and translate ideas into impactful systems.