VP of Machine Learning Research

Remote (United States) or San Francisco

Our client is a well-funded AI start-up backed by one of the largest technology platforms, with $millions committed for funding and ambitious plans to build one of the world's leading AI-native productivity platforms.

As VP of Machine Learning Research you will define the scientific direction behind the platform's intelligence, working alongside a small team of world-class engineers and researchers solving some of the most challenging problems in modern AI.

This VP of Machine Learning Research opportunity offers exceptional technical ownership, significant influence over product strategy, and the chance to help build an elite AI organisation from the ground up.

If you're looking for a VP of Machine Learning Research where your research will directly shape a product used by millions, this is an exceptional opportunity.

Key Responsibilities

Define and evolve the research strategy for reasoning, memory, planning and AI agent orchestration.
Lead technical decisions on model architecture, foundation model adoption and long-term AI capabilities.
Design rigorous evaluation frameworks measuring reliability, safety, robustness and real-world performance.
Drive research into frontier AI techniques including retrieval-augmented training, mixture-of-experts, distillation, multimodal learning and multi-agent systems.
Partner closely with product and engineering leadership to translate research into production AI systems.
Establish technical standards, research quality and engineering excellence across the organisation.

Required Experience & Skills

MSc or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence or a related discipline.
Extensive experience building and deploying large-scale machine learning systems in production.
Proven leadership of AI or machine learning research within commercial environments.
Deep expertise in large language models, reasoning systems, long-context memory and intelligent agents.
Strong understanding of model evaluation, failure analysis, alignment and AI safety.
Expert-level Python programming.
Hands-on experience with PyTorch and/or JAX.
Experience developing or operating GPU-based training and inference infrastructure.
Experience with Retrieval-Augmented Training (RAT), Mixture-of-Experts (MoE), model distillation or multimodal AI.
Experience building agentic AI systems capable of long-running workflows and external tool integration.
Previous experience within frontier AI laboratories, high-growth AI start-ups or globally recognised technology companies.
Outstanding technical judgement with the ability to make high-impact architectural decisions.
Strong commercial mindset focused on delivering reliable production AI rather than research alone.

Why Apply?

Join a well-funded AI company and substantial additional capital available.
Help define the research direction of a next-generation AI assistant designed for billions of users.
Work on some of the industry's hardest problems in reasoning, memory, planning and autonomous AI systems.
Join a small, high-talent-density team where research rapidly becomes production software.
Highly competitive executive compensation with significant equity participation.
Opportunity to influence the technical direction, culture and long-term success of an ambitious AI organisation from its earliest stages.

Recruiter's Note

This opportunity is ideally suited to experienced AI research leaders currently working within frontier AI organisations or elite technology companies. We're particularly interested in candidates who combine deep technical expertise with a builder's mindset and a track record of delivering production AI systems at scale will stand out.

Apply now today to be considered but if we've spoken before, then do get in touch with a copy of your CV, referencing the title and location, and with a short intro to cw@usatech-recruit.com.

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VP of Machine Learning Research