Sr AI Research Engineer
Cognex Open · verified Oct 22, 2026 At a glance
Senior AI Research role at Cognex. Fribourg · full-time.
Pay not stated AI Research salary
aimlroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Develop and assess vision models that meet tight power, response-time and data-efficiency needs
- Build fast demonstrations from business needs for colleagues and external stakeholders to assess
- Coordinate with software, hardware and product teams to turn prototypes into scalable, approachable product features
- Follow academic and industry findings, then propose algorithm improvements for Cognex products
- Guide complex research efforts and take new technology from early concept through scalable implementation
What you bring
- A master's degree from a leading engineering school in computer science, electrical engineering or an equivalent discipline
- At least five years of industrial work in deep learning or data science
- Experience building and optimizing deep learning algorithms in vision, language processing, speech recognition or a related technical area
- Strong Python and C++ programming, with proficiency in a framework such as PyTorch or TensorFlow
Who this fits
This senior R&D position suits an engineer who wants to pair deep learning research with product implementation in industrial machine vision. You’ll collaborate with software, hardware and product teams on work involving vision, language and multimodal AI.
From the employer
Job Description
Cognex is a global leader in the exciting and growing field of machine vision. Our employees, proudly called “Cognoids”, are passionate about solving the most difficult vision problems with our embedded cameras and software products featuring state-of-the-art 2D and 3D vision technology using deep learning. Our Work Hard, Play Hard, Move Fast culture recognizes achievement and dedication with unique rewards and celebrations.
We are looking for creative, bright, motivated Cognoids who share our passion for excellence and want to make an impact at a dynamic, global company. We celebrate our employees for their innovation, perseverance, and hard work in a fun, rewarding, and quirky environment. If you enjoy the sense of accomplishment that comes from working together to create products that solve tough problems for organizations around the world, contact us to see how you can become part of our team!
The Team: Deep Learning R&D – Advanced Vision Technology
This position is for an Engineer in the AI R&D group in the Vision Tools organization. As an Engineer on this team, you will be responsible for researching, designing, implementing and deploying state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms for industrial machine vision applications, with a mission to innovate on behalf of customers and make this technology accessible to a broad range of users and platforms. You will apply the latest trends in computer vision and natural language processing algorithms, including transformers and generative AI, to solve real world problems in the manufacturing industry such as defect inspection, OCR, image generation, etc. In this role, you will work alongside machine vision experts in software and hardware engineering, product, sales and marketing working on a range of problems across different industries, including consumer goods, aerospace, automotive, logistics, pharmaceuticals, robotics, and electronics.
Your research will typically span questions like:
What are the best neural network architectures to solve real world vision problems in industrial manufacturing?
How can we make neural networks run faster on low-powered devices?
How can we adapt neural networks to new tasks and products quickly in low data settings?
How can we leverage the latest advancements in natural language processing and multimodal AI to drive innovation in computer vision applications?
How can we combine traditional computer vision algorithms with deep learning technology, to solve a wider range of problems?
How do we productize advanced technology while making it easy for non-data-scientists to deploy on their production lines?
Within the team, development is primarily done in Python. Engineers in this group typically have experience with deep learning, image analysis, machine vision, statistical learning, or signal processing. Success in this role has the potential to lead to increased responsibility at Cognex.
The Role:
This group is seeking engineers with a passion for innovation to lead deep learning research and development in industrial machine vision, as well as those eager to actively collaborate with the product teams to implement cutting-edge solutions.
Essential Functions:
Research, develop and evaluate modern deep learning algorithms for computer vision, with a focus on algorithms with low power, low latency and data efficiency requirements
Translate business requirements into quick working prototypes to demonstrate capabilities to internal and external stakeholders
Collaborate closely with software and hardware engineering teams as well as product teams to transition prototypes to scalable and user-friendly implementations in Cognex products
Keep abreast of the latest research in industry and academia and propose algorithmic advancements applicable to Cognex products
Demonstrate thought leadership and drive complex research projects with a high degree of ambiguity
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:
Industry or academic experience developing and optimizing deep learning algorithms in one or more relevant technical areas - computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition
Deep understanding of convolutional neural networks and transformer architectures
Proficiency with at least one deep learning framework such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.
Strong Python/C++ programming skills
Creative, motivated, and looking to work hard for an aggressive growth company
Demonstrated experience in incubating and productizing new technology from ideation to scalable implementation
Minimum education and work experience required:
Master from a top engineering school in CS, EE or equivalent
5+ years industrial work experience in deep learning or data science