Staff Research Scientist, AdTech Product Innovation
About The Position
At Cognitiv, we are seeking a Staff Research Scientist to join our New Initiatives team. This team is responsible for transforming emerging AI research into new product lines, having previously developed products like AudienceGPT and ContextGPT. This role is unique, blending deep technical research with product intuition and industry foresight. You will be expected to identify opportunities, prove them technically, and guide them from concept to a shipped product. We are looking for an individual who thinks like a builder and a product person, with a strong understanding of the AdTech and LLM landscape to anticipate future trends and generate innovative ideas. This position is based in either our Bellevue, WA or San Mateo, CA office, offering a hybrid work schedule of 3 days in office and 2 days remote.
Requirements
- Master’s or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Statistics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
- 7+ years of experience in ML R&D or applied ML.
- Genuine curiosity about product and a bias toward shipping products.
- Deep understanding of the AdTech, programmatic advertising, and RTB landscape, including future trends.
- A track record of originating ideas and operating with little direction.
- Experience taking a product from idea to launch in a startup, incubator, or new-initiatives team.
- Strong technical expertise in PyTorch, transformers, and LLMs, including large-scale training, fine-tuning, and optimization.
- Strong Python fundamentals and software engineering practice.
- Experience building models for real-time, high-throughput systems.
- Ability to explain technical work clearly to non-technical audiences.
- Proactively identifies problems and opportunities and takes ownership.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- Comfortable working across research, engineering, and product in a fast-paced environment.
Nice To Haves
- Experience being the technical face of a launch (blog posts, talks, demos, or press).
- A track record of published research or meaningful contributions to the ML community.
Responsibilities
- Generate Product Ideas: Closely track the AdTech, programmatic, and LLM landscape to identify emerging product opportunities and advocate for them.
- Prototype Fast: Quickly transform raw ideas into working proofs of concept using LLMs, embeddings, and applied deep learning.
- Own It End to End: Guide validated ideas from research prototypes through to production-ready systems, collaborating with engineering to ensure successful product shipment.
- Push Context, Persona, and Embedding Research Forward: Advance the modeling techniques that power AudienceGPT, ContextGPT, and AI Personas, and define the next generation of these systems.
- Shape the Story: Collaborate with product and marketing teams to articulate the technical narrative for product launches.
- Stay Ahead of the Industry: Maintain a deep and current understanding of AdTech, real-time bidding, and the future of LLM-driven advertising products, integrating this knowledge into the product roadmap.
- Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Work effectively with research, engineering, product, and executive stakeholders to refine ideas and bring them to market.
Benefits
- Medical, Dental and Vision plan for US employees & Extended Health Benefits for Canadian employees
- 12 weeks paid parental leave + 4 weeks WFH
- Unlimited PTO + Work-From-Anywhere August
- Career development with clear advancement paths
- Equity for all employees
- Hybrid work model & daily team lunch
- Health & wellness stipend + cell phone reimbursement
- 401(k) & RRSP with employer match
- Parking (CA, WA, Vancouver offices) & pre-tax commuter benefits
- Employee Assistance Program
- Comprehensive onboarding (Cognitiv University)
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
