Member of Technical Staff, Research

ABOUT US:

At Fireworks, we’re building the future of generative AI infrastructure. Our platform delivers the highest-quality models with the fastest and most scalable inference in the industry. We’ve been independently benchmarked as the leader in LLM inference speed and are driving cutting-edge innovation through projects like our own function calling and multimodal models. Fireworks is a Series C company valued at $4 billion and backed by top investors including Benchmark, Sequoia, Lightspeed, Index, and Evantic. We’re an ambitious, collaborative team of builders, founded by veterans of Meta PyTorch and Google Vertex AI.

In the last few months alone we launched Fireworks Training, partnered with Microsoft Azure Foundry, and published research straight from our production systems. A few examples of what that looks like in practice:

- Frontier RL is cheaper than the mega-cluster narrative suggests: we ran cross-region rollouts using 98% sparse weight deltas and published what we learned. (blog https://fireworks.ai/blog/frontier-rl-is-cheaper-than-you-think)

- Open source agents with frontier advisors: matching frontier performance through training and harness engineering. (blog https://fireworks.ai/blog/open-source-agents-frontier-advisors)

- The fine-tuning bottleneck is not the algorithm: integration friction and iteration speed are what actually stall teams; we documented the patterns across dozens of customer engagements. (blog) https://fireworks.ai/blog/fine-tuning-bottlenecks

THE ROLE:

As a Member of Technical Staff on the Research team, you’ll push the boundaries of generative AI, advancing LLMs and multimodal systems through foundational research. Your work will enhance model efficiency, accuracy, and scalability, directly shaping our high-performance AI infrastructure. You'll collaborate with top experts in deep learning, distributed systems, and optimization to bring cutting-edge research into real-world applications. You'll also have the opportunity to shape how some of the world’s leading companies build and deploy AI through the models and tools you help create.

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

- Collaborate with engineering teams to transition research prototypes into production-grade systems

- Analyze empirical results, identify performance bottlenecks, and iterate quickly to improve model quality

- Contribute to internal research strategy by identifying high-impact opportunities and emerging trends in AI

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:

- Research background in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Physics, or similar field

- Experience solving analytical problems using analytic and quantitative approaches

- Experience communicating research to audiences with different backgrounds

- Experience coding in C/C++, Python, or other similar languages

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

- PhD degree in Computer Science, Computational Physics, Mathematics, or a similar field

- Research and engineering experience demonstrated via grants, fellowships, patents, internships, work experience, and/or coding competitions

- Experience having first-authored publications at peer-reviewed conferences or journals

- Experience working with ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or Jax

WHY FIREWORKS AI?

- Solve Hard Problems: Tackle challenges at the forefront of AI infrastructure, from low-latency inference to scalable model serving.

- Build What’s Next: Work with bleeding-edge technology that impacts how businesses and developers harness AI globally.

- Ownership & Impact: Join a fast-growing, passionate team where your work directly shapes the future of AI—no bureaucracy, just results.

- Learn from the Best: Collaborate with world-class engineers and AI researchers who thrive on curiosity and innovation.

Fireworks AI is an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all innovators.