Full-Time

Research Scientist

World Modeling

Institute of Foundation Models

Institute of Foundation Models

Researches and develops foundation models

Compensation Overview

$150k - $450k/yr

+ Bonus

Sunnyvale, CA, USA

In Person

Category
AI & Machine Learning (1)
Required Skills
PyTorch
Machine Learning

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Requirements
  • MSc or PhD in Machine Learning or Computer Science, or equivalent industry experience
  • Experience in large-scale model training (LLMs or Diffusion Models) on large clusters
  • Hands-on experience with state-of-the-art video generative models (e.g., Sora, Veo2, MovieGen, CogVideoX, etc.)
  • Experience in building and optimizing large-scale video data pipelines
  • Experience in accelerating diffusion model inference for improved efficiency
  • Exceptional problem-solving and troubleshooting skills to tackle complex technical challenges
  • Strong systems and engineering expertise in deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch
  • Strong communication and collaboration skills for effective cross-functional teamwork
  • Ability to navigate ambiguity and drive projects in rapidly evolving research areas
  • Research contributions to top-tier conferences or journals (e.g., ICML, ICLR, NeurIPS, ACL, CVPR, COLM, etc.), with published work in relevant domains
Responsibilities
  • Develop the foundational world model to accurately simulate the physical world
  • Collaborate with engineering and data teams to tackle key challenges in training the world model on large-scale clusters
  • Develop metrics and evaluation benchmarks to better assess model performance
  • Design and implement a scalable and efficient data annotation pipeline to ensure high-quality labeled data for training and evaluation
  • Optimize inference efficiency to enable real-time interaction
  • Develop and optimize infrastructure for training multimodal Large Language Models and video diffusion models at massive scale
  • Build scalable video data pipelines and annotation frameworks to support high-quality training data
  • Enhance inference efficiency through optimization and distillation techniques to enable real-time interaction
  • Develop methods for discretizing visual features into tokens for improved model representation
  • Establish rigorous benchmarks to assess physical accuracy, controllability, and intelligence
  • Investigate scaling law principles to guide efficient video pre-training strategies
Desired Qualifications
  • Visa sponsorship
Institute of Foundation Models

Institute of Foundation Models

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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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Company Stage

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Total Funding

N/A

Headquarters

United Arab Emirates

Founded

N/A

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Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • IFM's dedicated teams in Abu Dhabi, Paris, and Silicon Valley drive K2 and JAIS advancements.
  • Active job openings for AI research interns and engineers signal rapid team expansion.
  • PAN world model enables multi-level reasoning in simulations for real-world applications.

What critics are saying

  • OpenAI's o1 surpasses K2 and JAIS by 25% on benchmarks, shifting users in 6-12 months.
  • US export controls block NVIDIA H200 GPUs, delaying K2 releases by 9 months.
  • Stanford CRFM's model with 10x data captures 70% academic citations in 6-12 months.

What makes Institute of Foundation Models unique

  • IFM pioneers open-source K2 Think V2, UAE's sovereign 70B reasoning system released January 2026.
  • IFM advances JAIS 2, world's leading Arabic LLM trained on largest Arabic-first dataset.
  • IFM hosts models on Hugging Face under mbzuai-ifm for global open collaboration.

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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

Remote Work Options

Hybrid Work Options

Stock Options

Company Equity