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Posted May 10, 2026

Principal Research Scientist – Scaling

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Description: • Lead and grow a multidisciplinary research team focused on LLM scaling, efficiency, and systems performance. • Define and execute the scaling research roadmap in alignment with Databricks’ strategic objectives. • Drive algorithmic innovations for large-scale training and inference, including optimizers, low-precision techniques, and model adaptation methods. • Oversee the design and execution of large-scale experiments and benchmark results against state-of-the-art methods. • Optimize distributed training, parallelism, memory management, and hardware utilization in collaboration with systems and infrastructure teams. • Translate research breakthroughs into customer-facing capabilities in the Databricks AI platform. • Establish metrics, evaluation protocols, and best practices for scaling-focused research and drive adoption across the organization. • Champion responsible deployment by ensuring model behavior, reliability, and safety remain first-class considerations. • Work hands-on with the team to develop high-quality Python and PyTorch code for research, prototyping, and production integration. • Mentor and develop research scientists and engineers through technical guidance and career support. Requirements: • Proven ability to lead a research team developing novel techniques for foundation model efficiency or related topics. • Strong track record of industry impact. • Deep expertise in at least one of: generative AI, LLMs, distributed ML systems, model optimization, or responsible AI. • Strong emphasis on scaling and efficiency for large-scale neural networks. • Strong programming skills and demonstrated ability to write high-quality, efficient code in Python and PyTorch. • Demonstrated ability to translate research innovation into scalable product capabilities with product and engineering teams. • Excellent communication, leadership, and stakeholder management skills. • Experience influencing cross-functional roadmaps and aligning research with business impact. • Prior work at the intersection of systems and ML, such as distributed training frameworks, compiler and kernel optimization, or memory-/compute-efficient model design (preferred). • Strong industry and academic network in large-scale ML, with ongoing collaborations or conference service such as PC or area chair roles (preferred). • First-author publications at top ML/systems conferences such as ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS, or MLSys, or influential open-source contributions / widely used deployed systems, especially in optimization or efficiency (preferred). Benefits: • Competitive base salary range of $280,000 to $350,000 USD. • Eligibility for an annual performance bonus. • Eligibility for equity as part of the total compensation package. • Comprehensive benefits and perks offered regionally. • Compensation may be adjusted based on skills, experience, certifications, training, and work location. Apply tot his job Apply To this Job