Senior AI scientist
At a glance
Senior AI Research role at Cerence. Remote, India · full-time.
Pay not stated AI Research salary
aimlroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Design and train large transformer and hybrid foundation models for conversational AI across edge and cloud
- Investigate training instability and fix issues that emerge at scale
- Balance data, compute and architecture choices using scaling laws and compute-versus-data tradeoffs
- Set the technical path for future models and retain architectural ownership while working with ML systems teams
- Choose training optimizers and schedules, develop objectives, and run distributed training with methods such as FSDP and tensor parallelism
What you bring
- Strong grounding in deep learning and representation learning
- Hands-on ability to change transformer designs, including attention approaches, RoPE or mixture-of-experts
- Experience diagnosing optimizer instability, gradient problems and training-scale tradeoffs
- Ability to design model objectives such as next-token prediction, contrastive learning or preference alignment
- Knowledge of distributed training techniques and mixed-precision methods such as bf16 or fp8
Who this fits
This senior scientist role suits someone who wants to own foundation-model architecture and training decisions while collaborating with ML systems teams. The position is remote in India.
From the employer
A Moving Experience.
We are looking for a scientist to be a part of XUI- Cerence's conversational AI platform using large language models including multimodal (both on Edge and in cloud).
What You Will Work On
Design and train large‑scale transformer and hybrid foundation models
Diagnose and resolve training instabilities at scale
Navigate scaling tradeoffs across data, compute, and architecture
Define the technical direction for next‑generation models
Core Responsibilities
Deep Learning & Transformer Foundations
Apply strong fundamentals in deep learning and representation learning
Design and modify transformer architectures, including:
Attention variants
RoPE, ALiBi
Grouped Query Attention (GQA)
Mixture‑of‑Experts (MoE)
Build models from first principles, not just adapt pre‑existing codebases
Optimization Dynamics & Training Stability
Own optimizer and scheduler choices, including:
AdamW
Lion
Adafactor
Learning‑rate and warmup schedulers
Understand and debug:
Optimizer instability
Gradient pathologies
Scaling Laws & Compute Tradeoffs
Apply and validate scaling laws
Navigate Chinchilla‑style compute vs data tradeoffs
Loss Functions & Alignment
Design and experiment with loss functions including:
Next‑token prediction
Contrastive objectives
RLHF, DPO, GRPO
Distributed Foundation Model Training
Design and execute large‑scale training using:
FSDP
ZeRO‑3
Tensor parallelism
Pipeline parallelism
Apply:
Mixed precision (bf16, fp8)
Gradient checkpointing
Partner closely with ML systems teams while retaining architectural ownership
Cerence Inc. (Nasdaq: CRNC and www.cerence.com) is the global industry leader in creating unique, moving experiences for the automotive world. Spun out from Nuance in October 2019, Cerence is a new, independent company that has quickly gained traction as a leader in the automotive voice assistant space, working with all of the world’s leading automakers – from Ford and Fiat Chrysler to Daimler, Audi and BMW to Geely and SAIC – to transform how a car feels, responds and learns. Its track record is built on more than 20 years of industry experience and leadership and more than 500 million cars on the road today across more than 70 languages.
As Cerence looks to the future and continues an ambitious growth agenda, we need someone to join the team and help build the future of voice and AI in cars. This is an exciting opportunity to join Cerence’s passionate, dedicated, global team and be a part of meaningful innovation in a rapidly growing industry.
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER
Cerence is firmly committed to Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and to compliance with all federal, state and local laws that prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of age, race, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sex, sex stereotyping, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, religion, physical or mental disability, medical condition, marital status, citizenship status, sexual orientation, protected military or veteran status, genetic information and other protected classifications. Cerence Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.
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