Applied Research Scientist

Palo Alto, CA Until 8/23/2026 First posted June 18, 2025 Last posted June 18, 2025
Job description

We are seeking an Applied Research Scientist to join the Pika AI team. In this role, you will focus on developing advanced AI tools leveraging our foundation models.

You will collaborate closely with researchers, product designers, and engineers to develop models that deliver exceptional visual effects, character replacement, style transformations, and more, ensuring seamless integration into production environments.

Ideal candidates are passionate about cutting-edge applied AI techniques, including multi-modal video models, video super-resolution, conditional video generation, video editing, inpainting, and controllable generation.

Position Responsibilities

  • Develop innovative video applications, including controllable generation, video editing, and consistent character generation.
  • Design and build robust data pipelines essential for powering these applications.
  • Collaborate with product and design teams to translate state-of-the-art algorithms into user-friendly product features, enhancing the experience for tens of millions of users.

Position Requirements

  • 6 year+ experience working on computer vision, machine learning or related fields.
  • Demonstrated experience with diffusion models, GANs, VAEs, or other relevant AI models.
  • Direct experience working with vision transformers.
  • Experience working on multi-modal video models.
  • Strong engineering practices with proficiency in PyTorch, covering data processing, model training, and deployment workflows.
  • Hands-on experience developing applications based on foundational video models, including video inpainting, controllable generation, and human-centric modeling.
  • Proven expertise in large-scale data processing, dataset construction, and automated data cleaning.
  • (Optional) Solid coding abilities and a strong grasp of algorithm fundamentals; familiarity with distributed training tools such as FSDP or DeepSpeed is a plus.
About this role

Summary

Develop advanced AI tools and collaborate on innovative video applications.

Job title

Applied Research Scientist

Experience level

6+ years

Industry

software

Location requirements

Palo Alto, CA; remote work not allowed

Salary

Not specified

Management role

No

Skills & keywords

Required skills

computer visionmachine learningdiffusion modelsGANsVAEsvision transformersmulti-modal video modelsPyTorchdata processingmodel trainingdeployment workflowsvideo inpaintingcontrollable generationhuman-centric modelinglarge-scale data processingdataset constructionautomated data cleaning

Preferred skills

codingalgorithm fundamentalsdistributed training toolsFSDPDeepSpeed

Specializations

computer visionmachine learningvideo modelsAI tools
Locations

Structured locations inferred from the posting.

Palo Alto, CA, USA

On-site City