Member of Technical Staff, Research (2026 PhD New Grad) - Seattle
Fireworks · Greater Seattle Area
About this role
**ABOUT US** Fireworks is the platform for specialized intelligence, enabling companies to build, train, and serve AI models tailored to their own data, workflows, and products. Founded by the team behind PyTorch and backed by AMD, Atreides, Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures, Lightspeed, NVIDIA, Sequoia Capital, and TCV, Fireworks powers production AI with hundreds of state-of-the-art open models across text, image, embedding, audio, and multimodal workloads. Today, Fireworks is a Series D company valued at $17.5 billion. **THE ROLE** This role is designed for researchers finishing their PhD who want their work to reach production—not just publication. As a **Member of Technical Staff (Research)**, you’ll push the boundaries of generative AI, advancing LLMs and multimodal systems through foundational research. You’ll be paired with a senior researcher as a mentor and given a real research problem from day one. You’ll collaborate with experts in deep learning, distributed systems, and optimization—and you’ll see the models you help create deployed by leading companies, often within weeks rather than years. **Eligibility** We welcome candidates who have completed within the last 6 months, or are expected to complete by **December 2026**. **KEY RESPONSIBILITIES** - Conduct foundational research to advance the capabilities, efficiency, and reliability of LLMs and multimodal systems - Design, implement, and evaluate novel model architectures, training methods, and optimization techniques - Partner with engineering teams to transition research prototypes into production-grade systems - Analyze empirical results, identify performance bottlenecks, and iterate quickly to improve model quality - Bring ideas and emerging directions from your doctoral research into the internal research agenda **MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS** - PhD completed within the last 6 months, or expected completion by **December 2026**, in CS, Machine Learning, Computational Physics, Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, or a similar field - Research background in AI/ML/Physics (or related), demonstrated via dissertation, publications, or research projects - Experience solving analytical problems using analytic and quantitative approaches - Ability to communicate research to audiences with different backgrounds - Proficiency coding in **Python, C/C++,** or similar languages - Hands-on experience with ML frameworks such as **PyTorch, JAX,** or **TensorFlow** **PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS** - First-authored publications at top-tier peer-reviewed conferences/journals (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, MLSys, or similar) - Industry research internships and/or open-source contributions to ML systems, training, or inference - Research/engineering experience via grants, fellowships, patents, or coding competitions - Experience with large-scale model training, distributed systems, GPU kernel development, or inference optimization - Experience taking research code beyond the prototype stage **WHY FIREWORKS?** - **Solve Hard Problems:** Tackle challenges at the forefront of AI infrastructure (e.g., low-latency inference, scalable model serving) - **Build What’s Next:** Work with bleeding-edge technology impacting how businesses and developers use AI globally - **Ownership & Impact:** Fast-growing team with high impact and low bureaucracy - **Learn from the Best:** Collaborate with world-class engineers and AI researchers Fireworks AI is an **equal-opportunity employer**. We celebrate diversity and
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