Genies is culture’s avatar technology company empowering developers and artists to create their own interoperable gamified consumer experiences. The company has raised $250 million from investors including Silver Lake, BOND, NEA, and Bob Iger. Initially, Genies were adopted by thousands of Hollywood icons including Justin Bieber and Rihanna through partnerships with Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. Today, the company is also delivering avatars to the masses through experiences built with its Developer Kit and artist crowdsourced platform, The Workshop. These experiences all integrate together to form one avatar social network, Genies Party.

Seated in our Los Angeles or Bay Area office, Genies is seeking a Lead NLP Research Engineer. As a Lead NLP Research Engineer, you’ll play a pivotal role in utilizing advanced NLP and ML tools to create emotionally intelligent avatars that connect with users. Your responsibilities include recognizing and responding to emotional cues, giving each avatar a distinct voice and persona. You’ll also be at the forefront of shaping the future of AI-driven content and gameplay, ensuring immersive and unique experiences. Collaborating with the broader innovative R&D team, you’ll integrate multimodal techniques, allowing avatars to understand and respond to text, motions, speech, gestures, and facial expressions. Our mission is to revolutionize digital avatars, making them empathetic and authentic in user interactions, ushering in a new era of social engagement.

Genies leads the way in developing next-gen AI avatars for celebrities, enabling personalized interactions and adaptive learning. Thousands of cultural influencers have already embraced Genies, training their smart avatars for fully personalized conversations, interactions, and gameplay in Genies’ avatar social network. Our vision is to elevate digital interaction to an unprecedented level of personalization and immersion, bringing creators and influential tastemakers to life within our ecosystem. Join us on this journey to redefine the realm of digital avatars and elevate social interactions to new heights.

Examples of what you could do: 

• Identifying innovative NLP solutions for our product suite and defining the roadmap for their implementation.
• Lead the training, fine-tuning, and deployment of large language models 
• Oversee the AI lifecycle from data acquisition to model deployment and real-time monitoring, guaranteeing efficiency at each phase.
• Collaborate with cross-functional units, fostering knowledge exchange and enhancing business impact through machine learning.

What you have: 

• Established expertise and genuine passion for natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, deep learning, and large language models. 
• Minimum of 3 years in model training, deployment, and procedures for efficiently acquiring and validating human-labeled data.
• Experience training, fine-tuning and deploying large language models (LLM)
• Proven track record of implementing NLP techniques to develop conversational agents, chatbots, or virtual assistants
• Proficiency with deep learning frameworks like TensorFlow, PyTorch, and JAX.
• Familiarity with NLP toolkits such as spaCy and Hugging Face Transformers.
• Solid communication skills complemented by a history of fruitful collaborations.
• Thrive in a high-tempo setting, demonstrating flexibility as project requirements shift.
• Strong foundation in algorithms, data structures, and object-oriented programming.
• Self-motivated and adept at operating independently.

Nice to have: 

• An advanced degree (PhD or Master’s) in computer science, artificial intelligence, or a related discipline.
• Prior roles as a tech lead or manager.
• Experience crafting machine learning models in cloud environments like AWS or GCP, with specific knowledge of Sagemaker being a plus 
• Published contributions in renowned machine learning conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, EMNLP, CVPR, MLSys, etc.) or journals.
• Experience with game theory, AI creator bots, and emotionally intelligent avatars

How Genies will support you

Genies is a well-funded, growing start-up that cares deeply about each of our employees’ growth and success. Our roles and their responsibilities are created with a breadth of scope that introduces each employee to exciting new challenges and opportunities that a growing start-up encounters. The actual base pay is dependent upon a number of factors, including: professional background, training, transferable skills, work experience, education, location, business and product needs, and market demand. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. Full-time employees may also be eligible for equity compensation, in addition to a robust health, wellness, and benefits package. 

Starting Salary Range: $180,000.00 to $306,000.00 USD

Here’s why you’ll love working at Genies:

• You’ll work with a team that you’ll be able to learn from and grow with, including support for your own professional development
• You’ll be at the helm of your own career, shaping it with your own innovative contributions to a nascent team and product with flexible hours and a work from home policy
• You’ll enjoy the culture and perks of a startup, with the stability of being well funded
• Comprehensive health insurance for you and your family (Anthem + Kaiser Options Available), Dental and Vision Insurance
• Competitive salaries for all full time employees
• Unlimited paid time off, sick time, and paid company holidays, in addition to paid parental leave, bereavement leave, and jury duty leave for full-time employees
• Health & wellness support through programs such as monthly wellness reimbursement
• Working in a brand new, bright, open-environment and fun office space - there’s even a slide!

Genies is an equal opportunity employer committed to promoting an inclusive work environment free of discrimination and harassment. We value diversity, inclusion, and aim to provide a sense of belonging for everyone.