Senior Applied Scientist, Large Language Models

Shanghai on site Until 9/30/2026 First posted August 1, 2026 Last posted August 1, 2026
Job description

We are looking for a Senior Applied Scientist to develop advanced large language model capabilities for complex, knowledge-intensive applications.

You will work across applied research, model development, evaluation, and product implementation. The role requires both strong algorithmic foundations and the ability to translate emerging AI technologies into reliable, scalable product capabilities.

You will collaborate closely with engineering, product, data, and domain teams to identify high-value algorithmic problems and drive solutions from experimentation to production.

Key Responsibilities

  • Research and develop large language model capabilities for real-world applications.
  • Improve model performance in areas such as reasoning, long-context understanding, information extraction, retrieval-augmented generation, and domain adaptation.
  • Design and implement model post-training approaches, including supervised fine-tuning, preference optimization, knowledge distillation, and synthetic data generation.
  • Develop systematic evaluation methodologies covering accuracy, factuality, robustness, safety, latency, and cost.
  • Build scalable data preparation, model experimentation, and evaluation pipelines.
  • Analyse model failure cases and identify effective approaches for continuous improvement.
  • Explore emerging research and assess its practical value in production environments.
  • Work with engineering teams to deploy and optimize models and AI capabilities in production.
  • Collaborate with product managers and domain experts to translate business requirements into algorithmic solutions.
  • Contribute to technical standards, best practices, and the longer-term development of the AI technology roadmap.
  • Provide technical guidance and support to other algorithm engineers and researchers.

Qualifications

  • Master’s degree or PhD in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
  • Strong experience in machine learning, natural language processing, or applied AI.
  • Hands-on experience developing or adapting large language models.
  • Strong understanding of Transformer architectures, model training, fine-tuning, and inference.
  • Practical experience in at least two of the following areas:
  • LLM post-training and alignment
  • Model evaluation and benchmarking
  • Retrieval-augmented generation
  • Long-context modelling
  • Information extraction
  • Complex reasoning and planning
  • Model compression or inference optimization
  • Strong proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch.
  • Ability to independently define algorithmic problems, design experiments, analyse results, and deliver production-ready solutions.
  • Strong communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience developing AI solutions for enterprise, scientific, technical, or other knowledge-intensive applications.
  • Experience with distributed training, large-scale inference, or GPU optimization.
  • Experience building automated evaluation systems, data flywheels, or human-feedback pipelines.
  • Experience with multimodal models, AI agents, or tool-augmented language models.
  • Publications in reputable AI, machine learning, or NLP conferences, or meaningful open-source contributions.
About this role

Summary

Develop, evaluate, and optimize large language models for real-world applications.

Job title

Senior Applied Scientist, Large Language Models

Experience level

senior level

Industry

software

Location requirements

Shanghai, remote work not specified

Salary

Not specified

Management role

No

Skills & keywords

Required skills

machine learningnatural language processingPythonPyTorchtransformer

Preferred skills

enterprise AIdistributed trainingGPU optimizationautomated evaluationmultimodal models

Specializations

language modelsAInatural language processingmachine learningtransformer
Locations

Structured locations inferred from the posting.

Shanghai, China

On-site City