About the Institute of Foundation Models

We are a dedicated research lab for building, understanding, using, and risk-managing foundation models. Our mandate is to advance research, nurture the next generation of AI builders, and drive transformative contributions to a knowledge-driven economy.

As part of our team, you’ll have the opportunity to work on the core of cutting-edge foundation model training, alongside world-class researchers, data scientists, and engineers, tackling the most fundamental and impactful challenges in AI development. You will participate in the development of groundbreaking AI solutions that have the potential to reshape entire industries. Strategic and innovative problem-solving skills will be instrumental in establishing MBZUAI as a global hub for high-performance computing in deep learning, driving impactful discoveries that inspire the next generation of AI pioneers.

The Role

As a Machine Learning Engineer at the Institute of Foundation Models, your primary responsibility is to develop and implement innovative machine learning models that address real-world challenges, pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence research. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams to deploy scalable solutions, contributing to MBZUAI’s mission of driving impactful AI discoveries and positioning the institution as a leader in the global AI research community. Your expertise will be key in enhancing the performance of large-scale machine learning models, while supporting the development of transformative AI tools that can influence industries worldwide.

Key Responsibilities

Collaborate with Research teams to understand technologies, adapting and integrating them into codebase.
Develop and implement systems to support the lifecycle of machine learning models, such as data preprocessing, pre-training, post-training, evaluation and so on, especially foundation models.
Participate in or lead design reviews with peers and stakeholders to decide amongst available technologies.
Review code developed by other developers and provide feedback to ensure best practices (e.g., style guidelines, checking code in, accuracy, testability, and efficiency).
Contribute to existing documentation or educational content and adapt content based on product/program updates and user feedback.
Triage product or system issues and debug/track/resolve by analyzing the sources of issues and the impact on hardware, network, or service operations and quality.
Contribute to research papers and represent MBZUAI at industry conferences and events, showcasing the institution’s cutting-edge HPC and deep learning capabilities and establishing MBZUAI as a global leader in AI research and innovation.
Perform all other duties as reasonably directed by the line manager that are commensurate with these functional objectives.

Academic Qualifications

Minimum: Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
Preferred: Master's degree or PhD in Computer Science or related technical field.

Professional Experience - Minimum

3 years of experience in software engineering, including experience with Machine Learning (ML) models, ML infrastructure, Natural Language Processing or Computer Vision.
2 years of experience with software development in one or more programming languages, or 1 year of experience with an advanced degree in an industry setting.
2 years of experience with data structures or algorithms in either an academic or industry setting.
2 years of experience with machine learning algorithms and tools (e.g., TensorFlow), artificial intelligence, deep learning, or natural language processing.
Excellent problem-solving and troubleshooting skills to address complex technical challenges.
Effective communication and collaboration skills to work with cross functional teams.

Professional Experience - Preferred

2 years of experience with improving performance during large scale data processing
Hands-on experience with LLM algorithms, such as Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) and Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF).
Excellent data analysis skills.

About the company

IFM builds and studies foundation models—large AI models designed to learn broadly from diverse data and be used across many tasks. Its work centers on academic research to create open, fast, and practical models that address real-world societal needs, rather than narrow applications. The models are developed by a global team across Abu Dhabi, Paris, and Silicon Valley, with a strong emphasis on openness and collaboration to advance AI science and accessibility. Unlike typical private labs that lock models behind paywalls, IFM aims to provide publicly accessible, efficient models that can be used by researchers and developers to solve real problems. The overarching goal is to push the science of foundation models forward while ensuring their benefits reach society at large.

Company Size

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Total Funding

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Headquarters

United Arab Emirates

Founded

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Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

AWS, Cerebras, Nebius, Hugging Face, vLLM, and SGLang already distribute K2 Horizon.
October 2026 benchmark chatter praises K2 Horizon's small models and 375B enterprise flagship.
MBZUAI's October 2026 hiring surge supports rapid expansion across agents, world models, and infrastructure.

What critics are saying

Open-sourcing K2 Horizon hands competitors reproducible recipes, shrinking IFM's moat by 2027.
MBZUAI listed 45 IFM vacancies on October 2, 2026, signaling heavy execution strain.
If K2 Horizon misses commercial adoption, IFM remains a prestige lab dependent on state capital.

What makes Institute of Foundation Models unique

September 3, 2026 K2 Horizon shipped six fully open models with weights, code, and data.
IFM offers Apache 2.0 frontier models, unlike closed labs protecting training recipes and checkpoints.
MBZUAI-backed labs in Abu Dhabi, Silicon Valley, and Paris combine research depth with deployment access.

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Benefits

Health Insurance
Dental Insurance
Vision Insurance
Paid Vacation
Paid Holidays
Parental Leave
Employee Assistance Program
Life Insurance
Disability Insurance
401(k) Plan
Wellness Program
Flexible Work Hours

Company News

PR Newswire

Oct 15th, 2026

Jais 3 launches with six open Arabic models, up to 375B parameters, plus dialect-aware speech recognition

The Institute of Foundation Models (IFM), part of Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, and Inception42 launched Jais 3, a fleet of Arabic-native AI models, on October 15, 2026. It pairs six open language models, from 900 million to 375 billion parameters, with Jais Speech, a speech recognition model for Arabic and its dialects. The models are built on K2 Horizon, IFM's open-source fleet released in September. They handle Modern Standard Arabic and regional dialects, and can plan tasks, search the web, and produce Arabic documents and presentations. In the companies' tests on 24 Arabic benchmarks, the largest model matched the best open models on Arabic understanding and led on agentic tasks. Jais Speech recorded the lowest error rates among models compared. Jais 3 is available on Hugging Face. IFM is also releasing its benchmarks and code.

PR Newswire

Sep 3rd, 2026

Institute of Foundation Models launches K2 Horizon: largest fully open-source AI model fleet with weights, code, and training data

The Institute of Foundation Models has launched K2 Horizon, a fleet of six fully open-source AI models ranging from 0.9 billion to 375 billion parameters. The models include weights, code, training data, and methodologies, allowing researchers and developers to inspect and reproduce the work. The 0.9B, 3.7B, and 7B models set new benchmarks at their respective scales. The smallest model can run on watches and glasses, whilst the 3.7B and 7B models work on phones. The dense 32B model and sparse 36B model suit local hosting, and the 375B flagship model targets enterprise deployments. Launched by Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in May 2025, IFM now operates across Silicon Valley, Paris, and Abu Dhabi. The models are available through Hugging Face, vLLM, and SGLang, with API access through partners including AWS and Cerebras. All models use the Apache 2.0 licence.

Institute of Foundation Models

Machine Learning Engineer

About the job

Key Responsibilities

Academic Qualifications

Professional Experience - Minimum

Professional Experience - Preferred

About the company

Get referred to Institute of Foundation Models

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

What critics are saying

What makes Institute of Foundation Models unique

Benefits

Company News