Fireworks AIMember of Technical Staff, Research
Fireworks AI is hiring a Member of Technical Staff, Research in San Mateo, United States. It pays $210k-$320k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Fireworks AI.
Level's read on this job
- On Level's scale, this role is Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
- The posting mentions PyTorch, TensorFlow and JAX among its tools and skills.
- Level classes it as a senior role.
- Fireworks AI has 90 other open roles on Level.
AI in this role
Conduct foundational research to advance generative AI models, LLMs, and multimodal systems at Fireworks.
About Us:
Fireworks is the platform for specialized intelligence, enabling companies to build, train, and serve AI models tailored to their own data, workflows, and products. Founded by the team behind PyTorch and backed by AMD, Atreides, Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures, Lightspeed, NVIDIA, Sequoia Capital, and TCV, Fireworks powers production AI with hundreds of state-of-the-art open models across text, image, embedding, audio, and multimodal workloads. Today, Fireworks is a Series D company valued at $17.5 billion, bringing together an ambitious, collaborative team that's building the future of enterprise AI.
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?
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.
How we rate this
Member of Technical Staff, Research at Fireworks AI rates 95 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Questions you could be asked
- Tell me about a project where deep learning was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where generative ai was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where llms was part of your work. What did you do?
- Walk me through how you've used PyTorch in your day-to-day work.
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Deep learning, Distributed Systems, Generative AI, LLMs, and PyTorch. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.
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