[Hiring] Principal Applied AI Scientist @Vantor

Role Description

Designs, develops and programs methods, processes, and systems to consolidate and analyze unstructured, diverse “big data” sources to generate actionable insights and solutions for client services and product enhancement. Interacts with product and service teams to identify questions and issues for data analysis and experiments. Develops and codes software programs, algorithms and automated processes to cleanse, integrate and evaluate large datasets from multiple disparate sources. Identifies meaningful insights from large data and metadata sources; interprets and communicates insights and findings from analysis and experiments to product, service, and business managers.

Having wide-ranging experience, uses professional concepts and company objectives to resolve complex issues in creative and effective ways. Works on complex issues where analysis of situations or data requires an in-depth evaluation of variable factors. Exercises judgment in selecting methods, techniques and evaluation criteria for obtaining results. Networks with key contacts outside own area of expertise. Determines methods and procedures on new assignments and may begin to coordinate activities of other team members. Typically requires a minimum of 8 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 6 years and a Master's degree; or a PhD with 3 years experience; or equivalent experience.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and deploy AI-driven applications that transform large-scale geospatial data into actionable insights and predictive intelligence.
• Build and operate end-to-end AI/ML pipelines including data ingestion, preprocessing, feature engineering, training, evaluation, and production inference.
• Productionize reasoning models, vision-language models (VLMs), and multimodal AI systems that combine imagery, geospatial signals, and structured data.
• Architect enterprise-grade training and experimentation frameworks, including automated pipelines, experiment tracking, benchmarking, and reproducible evaluation.
• Create synthetic datasets and test harnesses to validate model performance, robustness, and edge-case behavior in real-world operational environments.
• Work closely with domain experts, software engineers, product managers, and research partners to translate complex Earth intelligence challenges into deployable AI solutions.
• Optimize models and inference systems for scalability, latency, cost efficiency, and reliability on modern cloud infrastructure.
• Implement and maintain production inference systems, including monitoring, model versioning, retraining workflows, and performance tracking.
• Stay current with the latest advances in foundation models, generative AI, multimodal learning, and reasoning systems, and translate research breakthroughs into practical systems.
• Maintain high engineering standards through code reviews, documentation, experimentation discipline, and collaborative problem solving.
• Help shape the next generation of Earth AI capabilities through collaboration with leading research organizations and technology partners.

Qualifications

• MS or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Applied Mathematics, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of experience building and deploying machine learning systems in production environments.
• Demonstrated experience designing and delivering end-to-end ML pipelines, including data processing, training automation, evaluation frameworks, and scalable inference.
• Hands-on experience developing and deploying deep learning models, particularly in one or more of the following areas:
• Vision-language models (VLMs)
• Multimodal learning
• Reasoning models
• Large language models (LLMs)
• Computer vision or geospatial AI
• Strong programming skills in Python, with experience using modern ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX.
• Experience building reproducible experimentation pipelines, including model evaluation, dataset versioning, and experiment tracking.
• Experience deploying models into production environments using modern cloud infrastructure and containerized systems.
• Familiarity with distributed training, large-scale data processing, and model optimization techniques.
• Ability to collaborate across research, engineering, and product teams to bring advanced AI capabilities into real-world applications.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with geospatial data, remote sensing, satellite imagery, or Earth observation systems.
• Experience building or fine-tuning foundation models, multimodal models, or agentic AI systems.
• Familiarity with Google Cloud Platform (GCP), including large-scale AI/ML infrastructure.
• Experience implementing model monitoring, evaluation pipelines, and automated retraining systems.
• Contributions to open-source AI projects, research publications, or patents.

Benefits

• Vantor offers a competitive total rewards package that goes beyond the standard, including a robust 401(k) with company match.
• Mental health resources, and unique perks like student loan repayment assistance, adoption reimbursement, and pet insurance to support all aspects of your life.
• This position is incentive eligible with a target based on contribution, company performance, and/or individual results achieved.