Senior AI Research Engineer - NZ

Join the Revolution at Leonardo.Ai!

Leonardo.Ai, an Australian tech startup, is on a transformative mission to democratise design and ignite the world's creativity through our groundbreaking AI-powered platform. With over 20 million users worldwide and counting, we're just starting!.

The Role:

This is an exciting opportunity for AI or Machine Learning professionals and academics to join the brightest minds, helping Australia’s most potent generative AI-powered platform unleash the world’s creativity through novel tools for human-ai collaboration and intelligent systems.

As an AI Research Engineer, you will be involved in training, evaluating, and engineering the training/inference infrastructure for large models for intelligence in visual domains. You will also work with and interpret petabyte-scale data, build and optimise efficient systems for model research, and/or apply AI techniques to create novel user experiences. This role involves mentoring junior team members and playing a key role in strategic planning. 

We are hiring across multiple disciplines in AI Research and would love to hear from candidates with foundational model training, data exploration, systems engineering, and optimisation backgrounds. 

Responsibilities: 

• Solve engineering problems to optimise all aspects of model training from data loading to output over 1000s of GPUs.

• Profiling and diagnosing points of latency and addressing in areas of low-level optimisation and network communications.

• We are designing high-performance distributed systems inference and training.

• We are building infrastructure for working with complex multimodal data, such as video, imagery, 3D data types, text, and beyond.

• Taking AI research output from prototype to robust, scalable, production-ready code

• Collaborate with other technical teams on new features, improvements and platform stability.

Skills we like: 

• Proficient with building and managing AWS/GCP infrastructure. 

• Experience in Python, deep learning frameworks, cloud computing, and software engineering

• Optimising inference of models from data movement, compiling, pruning, or other techniques

• Deploying and optimising models that run over several GPUs

• Previous exposure with Torch, SageMaker, and CUDA.

• Knowledge of Generative AI, particularly diffusion-based image generation and VLMs.

• Engineering experience with deep learning, LLMs, computer vision, AI model training, and data pipelines. 

• AI model and system performance tuning and optimisation. 

• Team player attitude capable of collaborating with cross-functional teams

• Curious and stays on top of new and changing tools and techniques in the AI space. 

• Experience with machine learning algorithms and tools (e.g., Pytorch, JAX), artificial intelligence, deep learning, and natural language processing

Our Culture:

• Inclusive Culture: We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment where everyone feels valued and empowered. At Leonardo AI, your unique perspectives and experiences are welcomed and essential to our success.

• Flexible Work Environment: We understand the importance of work-life balance. Enjoy the flexibility to work remotely or from our vibrant offices. We have employees all over Australia, ensuring you can thrive personally and professionally.

• Empowering Growth: Your development is our priority. We offer continuous learning opportunities and career growth tailored to your goals. You’ll be encouraged to grow and excel in your career at Leonardo AI.

• Impactful Work: Join us in shaping the future of AI. You'll work on innovative projects that have a meaningful impact, and your contributions will help drive advancements in AI creativity.

What's in it for you?

A range of benefits to set you up for every success in and outside of work. Here's a taste of what's on offer:

• Impact the future of AI

• Reward package including equity - we want our success to be yours too

• Inclusive parental leave policy that supports all parents & carers with 18 weeks paid leave

• An annual Vibe & Thrive allowance to support your wellbeing, social connection, office setup & more

• Flexible leave options that empower you to be a force for good, take time to recharge and supports you personally, including remote working abroad

• Support with your professional development

• Fun and engaging company events, both virtual and in-person

We encourage you to apply and start the conversation whether you’re based locally in Australia or overseas.

• Shape the Future of AI: Join us in revolutionising content creation and build a platform at the forefront of generative AI, in an award winning culture.

• Hybrid and Remote Options: Flexibility is key. Choose a work arrangement that suits your lifestyle and allows you to do your best work. Our hybrid team members meet in the Sydney office 1-2 times per week, with free lunch on Fridays.

• Benefits: We offer a generous package including paid parental leave, a generous home office and wellness budget, and remote working from abroad.

• Diversity and Inclusion: We intentionally seek people from a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives to join our team. We wholeheartedly believe in creating an inclusive environment where every voice we hear contributes to our success.

While we love technology, rest assured that our interview process is all human. A Talent team member will review your application, and we'll contact you either way to let you know the outcome. Here's what you can expect.

Round 1 - Meet Your Recruiter:

• Our Talent team will reach out and arrange a 30-minute video call where you'll cover your experience, skills, and career motivations. You'll also get essential context about the role, the team, and how you can contribute towards our goals.

Round 2 - Craft Interview:

• You'll meet some team members to discuss the technical task in more depth, work through some technical questions related to your expertise and cover past projects, experience and career aspirations.

Round 3 - Technical Task:

• If you're applying for a technical role, you may be given a short take-home task to assess your skills and approach to problem-solving. This could be a real-life business scenario to unpack, a presentation, a test or a collaboration exercise. (Please note, depending on the role, the order of rounds 2 & 3 are interchangeable)

Round 4 - Values interview:

• You'll be able to meet with the Department Head for a short, informal conversation to understand your potential impact, the growth area we can support, and how aligned you are with our values and culture.

If there are any adjustments we can make that would make you more comfortable at any point in the interview process, please don't hesitate to let us know.