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What you can expect
Zoom's AI Incubation team is seeking a Research Scientist to contribute to the next wave of LLM post-training, reinforcement learning, and federated AI innovation. You will join a world-class group of PhDs and applied scientists focused on pushing the boundaries of model alignment, reasoning, and agentic intelligence.
As a Research Scientist, you will advance Zoom's applied AI research, working with cutting-edge LLM post-training, RLHF/DPO/RLAIF, federated AI, and multimodal intelligence to deliver breakthroughs that redefine human-AI collaboration. You will participate in incubation efforts that transform bold research ideas into scalable, production-ready systems powering the next generation of Zoom AI Companion.
About the Team
The AI Incubation team is a high-impact applied research group that has built one of the best-performing federated AI systems in the industry. The team operates at the frontier of LLM post-training, reinforcement learning for agentic AI, multimodal understanding, federated AI, and AI evaluation.
Zoom's federated AI architecture—spanning Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google models—enables privacy-preserving, edge-to-cloud learning that adapts to user context while maintaining enterprise-grade governance. The Incubation team plays a central role in advancing this federated AI leadership, developing new methods for distributed model optimization, personalized prefix learning, and secure collaboration.
Responsibilities
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Conducting frontier research in LLM post-training, reinforcement learning, and federated AI to achieve state-of-the-art reasoning, personalization, and reliability.
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Developing and implementing evaluation and benchmarking frameworks for model performance, safety, and user experience across distributed environments.
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Contributing to model architectures, fine-tuning strategies, and reinforcement learning pipelines across Zoom's federated AI ecosystem.
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Partnering with product and infra teams to translate research prototypes into scalable, production-grade AI systems that leverage edge and cloud collaboration.
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Participating in a culture of scientific rigor, creativity, and rapid experimentation.
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Exploring emerging AI paradigms—from agentic reasoning and multimodal fusion to self-improving federated systems—to continuously advance Zoom's AI frontier.
What we’re looking for
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Have a PhD or advanced degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a related field.
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Demonstrate proven expertise in LLM post-training, RLHF/DPO/PPO, federated learning, or reinforcement learning for reasoning and alignment.
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Have deep understanding of large-scale distributed training systems and experience with PyTorch, Transformers, DeepSpeed, or CUDA.
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Hold a publication or open-source record demonstrating innovation in LLM optimization, federated AI, or agentic intelligence.
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Demonstrate passion for applied AI research that bridges scientific discovery and real-world impact.
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Have experience implementing AI research concepts and translating them into practical applications.
Salary Range or On Target Earnings:
Minimum:
$137,700.00Maximum:
$275,400.00In addition to the base salary and/or OTE listed Zoom has a Total Direct Compensation philosophy that takes into consideration; base salary, bonus and equity value.
Information about Zoom’s benefits is on our careers page here .
Note: Starting pay will be based on a number of factors and commensurate with qualifications & experience.
We also have a location based compensation structure; there may be a different range for candidates in this and other locations.
Good news – this job posting is more like a marathon, not a sprint, so it could be available for a while! We're on the lookout for awesome folks to join Zoom in various similar roles. No need to rush, just hit us up whenever you're ready to apply. We're always keeping an eye out for amazing talent!
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