Staff Research Engineer - Interactive Avatars

About the role

As a Staff Research Engineer, you will join a team of 40+ Researchers and Engineers within the R&D Department working on cutting edge challenges in the Generative AI space, with a focus on avatar centric interactive video diffusion models. Within the team you'll have the opportunity to work on the applied side of our research efforts and directly impact our solutions that are used worldwide by over 60,000 businesses.

Responsibilities

• Adapt diffusion models to incorporate diverse conditioning signals (e.g., audio, motion, interaction cues).
• Develop methods for streaming infinitely long video sequences at real time rates.
• Work on the perceptual layer of interactive agents, including understanding user audio and generating appropriate contextual reactions.
• Improve lip sync accuracy, motion realism, and overall visual quality in video diffusion models.
• Build robust evaluation frameworks and test suites to enable continuous quality tracking.
• Collaborate closely with our data team to define data needs and ensure high quality datasets.
• Stay up to date with research in world models, interactive human/agent modeling, diffusion models, and related areas.

What we're looking for

• Comfortable owning and executing on the responsibilities listed above.
• Strong ML (e.g., diffusion, GANs, VAEs) and computer vision background with relevant industry experience.
• Hands on experience with diffusion models (ideally avatar centric or video focused) and up to date with recent advances.
• Proficient in PyTorch and familiar with modern ML frameworks and tooling.
• Strong Python engineering skills, confident with git and version control, and a commitment to clean, maintainable research code.
• Outcome driven, detail oriented, and motivated to push state of the art research into real product impact.
• Clear communicator of hypotheses, experiments, and results.

What will make you stand out

• Experience with audio conditioned video diffusion models and deep knowledge of recent video DiT architectures.
• Demonstrated ability to own the full model development pipeline end to end, from data preparation to model design, training, and evaluation.
• A strong publication record in areas such as world models, interactive agents, or video diffusion models.

The good stuff

• Competitive compensation (salary + stock options + bonus)
• Hybrid work setting with an office in London, Amsterdam, Zurich, Munich, or remote in Europe.
• 25 days of annual leave + public holidays
• Great company culture with the option to join regular planning and socials at our hubs
• + other benefits depending on your location