Research Scientist, PRIOR

Who You Are:

As a Research Scientist on our team, you'll have the unique opportunity to work on research problems that can improve the vision, and multimodal models, contribute to the development of completely open foundation models, and experiment with mobile robots in the real world. You will contribute to projects similar to our recent Molmo model release (https://molmo.allenai.org/).

We are looking for applicants interested in computer vision, natural language processing, machine learning, robotics, agents, and/or embodied AI. International candidates are welcome to apply. Pay is competitive, and visa sponsorship is available.

We collaborate frequently with researchers on other Ai2 teams focused on natural language processing and HCI, among others. Our main office has close ties and unique access to researchers at the University of Washington, only 1.5 miles away. Researchers excited about such internal and external collaborations are encouraged to apply.

Research Scientists in the PRIOR team will work on multiple exciting research projects in the above areas, but will also have the opportunity to contribute and engage in a variety of other activities critical to our research and mission. These include opportunities to lead select projects, mentor interns and pre-doctoral candidates, author and present scientific papers and presentations for peer-reviewed journals and conferences and collaborate with researchers at other organizations including universities.

We are considering applications on a rolling basis. The deadline of the first round of applications is on March 15th, 2025.

See our publications for examples of our work (https://allenai.org/papers?tags=semantic%20scholar).

See our team page to learn more about our team members and projects (https://prior.allenai.org/).

Who We Are:

Ai2's Perceptual Reasoning and Interaction Research team (PRIOR) is looking for strong researchers to join our team. PRIOR seeks to advance computer vision to create AI systems that see, explore, learn, reason, and interact with the world.

As a research scientist in the PRIOR team, you will have the opportunity to work in a variety of research areas including:

• Embodied AI / Robotics - Enable agents that safely navigate, manipulate objects, and follow instructions in simulation and in the real world (w/ real robots).
• Language & Vision - Make vision and language models more general, efficient, and capable.

Agents - Develop multimodal agents that automate real user tasks.

• AI for Common Good - Apply AI to help address global challenges such as climate change, illegal fishing, and wildlife poaching
• Open source projects - Make substantial contributions to the tools needed for robust, reproducible, and distributed experimentation (including AllenAct framework for Embodied AI, Ai2-THOR)

We regularly publish in high-profile conferences and journals in computer vision (CVPR, ICCV, ECCV), robotics (CoRL, RSS, IROS, ICRA), machine learning (e.g., NeurIPS, ICLR), NLP (e.g., ACL, EMNLP), amongst other areas.

Your Next Challenge:

At Ai2, you will be working with world-class AI researchers and talented software engineers. We perform team-based, ambitious research, with a mandate to strive for big breakthroughs, not just incremental progress, in an exciting and interactive workplace.

All scientists have the opportunity to mentor interns (and other students)and will participate directly in Ai2's groundbreaking work. There are no restrictions on publications. Each of our research teams has a specific application for interested candidates, so please familiarize yourself with our projects and apply to the specific team(s) that best match your skills and interests. Here are the general research topics we work on:

• Embodied AI
• Robotics
• MLLMs and LLMs
• Web Agents
• Foundation models
• Language and Vision
• Visual reasoning
• Representation learning
• Image and video generation
• Image and video editing
• Efficient deep learning
• And more ...

What You'll Need:

Qualifications:

• A strong foundation (typically PhD level) in one or more of the following areas: computer vision, machine learning, (M-)LLMs, foundation models, robotics, embodied AI, natural language processing, knowledge representation and reasoning, and agents.
• A strong publication record in AI-related areas. Example venues include CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, CoRL, RSS, ICRA, IROS, ACL, EMNLP, etc. Contributions to research communities (e.g. workshop organization, tutorials) are a plus.
• Strong software engineering skills. Experience with deep learning frameworks (e.g. PyTorch, Tensorflow, Jax). Bonus qualifications:
• Research experience in related areas like training dynamics, efficiency, data curation, large-scale multi-node training, multimodal model debugging, post-training methods (e.g., SFT, RLHF, DPO, PPO), reinforcement learning, imitation learning, real-world robot experimentation, simulation-based training, among others.
• Contributions to open-source research libraries (e.g. AllenNLP, AllenAct, Ai2-THOR) are a plus.

Physical Demands and Work Environment:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by a team member to successfully perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the functions.

• Must be able to remain in a stationary position for long periods of time.
• The ability to communicate information and ideas so others will understand. Must be able to exchange accurate information in these situations.
• The ability to observe details at close range.
• Can work under deadlines.

A Little More About AI2:

The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence is a non-profit research institute in Seattle founded by Paul Allen. The core mission of AI2 is to contribute to humanity through high-impact research in artificial intelligence.

In addition to AI2's core mission, we also aim to contribute to humanity through our treatment of each member of the AI2 Team. Some highlights are:

• We are a learning organization - because everything AI2 does is ground-breaking, we are learning every day. Similarly, through weekly AI2 Academy lectures, a wide variety of world-class AI experts as guest speakers, and our commitment to your personal on-going education, AI2 is a place where you will have opportunities to continue learning alongside your coworkers.
• We value diversity - We seek to hire, support, and promote people from all genders, ethnicities, and all levels of experience regardless of age. We particularly encourage applications from women, non-binary individuals, people of color, members of the LGBTQA+ community, and people with disabilities of any kind.
• We value inclusion - We understand the value that people's individual experiences and perspectives can bring to an organization, and we are building a culture in which all voices are heard, respected and considered.
• We emphasize a healthy work/life balance - we believe our team members are happiest and most productive when their work/life balance is optimized. While we value powerful research results which drive our mission forward, we also value dinner with family, weekend time, and vacation time. We offer generous paid vacation and sick leave as well as family leave.
• We are collaborative and transparent - we consider ourselves a team, all moving with a common purpose. We are quick to cheer our successes, and even quicker to share and jointly problem solve our failures.
• We are in Seattle - and our office is on the water! We have mountains, we have lakes, we have four seasons, we bike to work, we have a vibrant theater scene, and we have so much else. We even have kayaks for you to paddle right outside our front door. We welcome interest from applicants from outside of the United States.
• We are friendly- chances are you will like every one of the 200+ (and growing) people who work here. We do.

AI2 is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. You may view the related Know Your Rights compliance poster and the Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination Provision by clicking on their corresponding links.

This employer participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S. If E-Verify cannot confirm that you are authorized to work, this employer is required to give you written instructions and an opportunity to contact the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Social Security Administration (SSA) so you can begin to resolve the issue before the employer can take any action against you, including terminating your employment. Employers can only use E-Verify once you have accepted a job offer and completed the Form I-9.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to employees and applicants with disabilities to the full extent required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). If you feel you need a reasonable accommodation pursuant to the ADA, you are encouraged to contact us at recruiting@allenai.org.

Benefits:

• Team members and their families are covered by medical, dental, vision, basic life insurance, basic accidental death and dismemberment insurance, short-term disability, long-term disability, and an employee assistance program.
• Team members are able to enroll in our voluntary life insurance program, our voluntary accidental death and dismemberment program, our health savings account plan, our healthcare reimbursement arrangement plan, and our health care and dependent care flexible spending account plans.
• Team members are able to enroll in our company's 401k plan.
• Team members will receive $125 per month to assist with commuting or internet expenses and will also receive $200 per month for fitness and wellbeing expenses.
• Team members will also receive up to ten sick days per year, up to seven personal days per year, up to 20 vacation days per year and twelve paid holidays throughout the calendar year.
• Team members will be able to receive annual bonuses and can participate in the long-term incentive plan.

Note: This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by the team members(s) of this position. Team members will be required to follow any other job-related instructions and to perform any other job-related duties requested by any person authorized to give instructions or assignments. All duties and responsibilities are essential functions and requirements and are subject to possible modification to reasonably accommodate individuals with disabilities. To perform this job successfully, the team member(s) will possess the skills, aptitudes, and abilities to perform each duty proficiently. Some requirements may exclude individuals who pose a direct threat or significant risk to the health or safety of themselves or others. The requirements listed in this document are the minimum levels of knowledge, skills, or abilities. This document does not create an employment contract, implied or otherwise, other than an at will relationship.