Research Scientist, Gen AI & User Representation Learning at Predactiv
Palo Alto, CA
$100,000–$130,000
Jul 13, 2026
Palo Alto, CA
Jul 20, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A research scientist role centered on developing and deploying machine learning systems for user representation learning, semantic understanding, and generative AI. Day-to-day work spans designing transformer-based models, building embedding and retrieval pipelines, and training on large-scale behavioral and multimodal datasets, with a strong expectation of carrying work from research prototype through to production. Best suited to someone with a PhD or equivalent applied research background who is comfortable bridging scientific rigor and engineering execution.
Senior level · 5+ years · Remote
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 2 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 830 people nationally plausibly meet what this posting asks for (data scientists). range 170–1,250
Applicant volume Light — Few people clear these requirements, so an application that does clear them gets looked at. Worth applying to even if you miss a nice-to-have.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $122,874 (middle half $87,544–$162,374).
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (5)
The PhD requirement is listed under a hard 'Requirements' heading but is explicitly softened by 'Equivalent industrial research experience will also be considered' — the degree requirement is set to None accordingly.
The 5-year experience figure appears under 'What We're Looking For' with the qualifier 'preferred', not under the hard Requirements block; it is treated as the role-level experience signal but not a strict gate.
PyTorch is explicitly flagged '(preferred)' over JAX within the Requirements section; both are captured as a single skill with JAX as the alternative.
The role sits at the boundary between Data Scientist (15-2051) and Software Developer (15-1252): it emphasises novel ML research and model development but also end-to-end production deployment and GPU systems engineering. 15-2051 is chosen as primary given the explicit research-scientist framing, PhD expectation, and emphasis on scientific rigor; 15-1252 is the runner-up given the strong engineering and deployment scope.
Caller marked this a fully-remote role — scored against the national candidate pool.
Read the full posting
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