Founding ML Researcher - Experience in DeepMind, OpenAI, Strong publications
Talent Search PRO · San Francisco, CA
$200,000–$300,000from the description
Jul 1, 2026
San Francisco, CA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A founding-level research role focused on document AI, covering the full machine learning lifecycle from experimentation and training through to production deployment. The work centers on building models for parsing and understanding unstructured documents, including layout models and vision-language model approaches, while collaborating closely with founders to influence both product and engineering direction. Suits a researcher comfortable bridging theory and real-world systems.
Senior level · National · Full-time
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
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). This posting is about at that midpoint.
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 (6)
Location is not specified anywhere in the posting; CBSA and state fields are left blank. The role may be remote or at a startup office — the posting gives no indication.
The title 'Founding ML Researcher' carries no explicit seniority level word, so the title states no level; however, the end-to-end ownership, product strategy involvement, and founding-team scope support a Senior classification.
All core skills are drawn from a single undifferentiated requirements block ('You should have experience with most of the following') — the 'most of' qualifier was noted but the block functions as the primary requirements section, so skills within it are treated as hard gates.
PhD, publications in top-tier AI conferences, and model serving/inference optimization experience are explicitly flagged as 'Bonus' — listed as preferred.
The role sits at the boundary between ML Research (15-2051) and Software Development (15-1252) given the explicit emphasis on production deployment and engineering collaboration; 15-2051 was chosen as primary due to the research-first framing and 'ML Researcher' title.
Ignored 2 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): document understanding, inference optimization.
Read the full posting
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