Senior Research Engineer (LLM foundations)

Senior Research Engineer (LLM foundations)Technology Innovation Institute (TII) is a publicly funded research institute, based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. It is home to a diverse community of leading scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and researchers from across the globe, transforming problems and roadblocks into pioneering research and technology prototypes that help move society ahead.Artificial Intelligence Research Centre The Artificial Intelligence Cross-Center Unit is the machine learning powerhouse of TII, working in close collaboration with our other research centers to harness the full benefits of AI across our projects – and drive innovation from new computing paradigms, designing and delivering new AI methodologies, technologies, solutions, and systems that address challenging issues across multiple sectors of the economy – from technology to healthcare, cybersecurity, and government, among others.We incorporate core elements of intelligence (perception, sensing, planning, and language) in the ideation, design, and prototyping of next-generation systems with human-like intelligence. We build advanced AI computing and scalable AI-based software stacks and hardware systems to deliver significant enhancements in systems infrastructure. Our AI researchers, scientists, and engineers collaborate to ensure innovative outcomes, from AI theory to AI technologies towards better intelligence.The foundational models team at the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) is at the forefront of developing cutting-edge generative AI and language models. Our Falcon models have garnered significant open-source adoption, and we are committed to pushing the boundaries of AI performance, alignment, and safety. Join our dynamic team to advance the capabilities of our foundational models and make impactful contributions to the AI community.As a Senior Research Engineer on the Falcon team, you will help shape the future of generative AI by transforming cutting-edge research into scalable, usable solutions. Your role will focus on bridging the gap between academic innovation and real-world deployment by optimizing the architecture, training, and inference performance of Falcon models. You’ll work closely with researchers and engineers to ensure our models are efficient, deployable, and impactful across platforms and use cases.In this role, you will also engage with the open-source community and end-users to promote the usability, adoption, and continuous improvement of Falcon models. This position offers a unique opportunity to contribute to both technical excellence and community-driven impact.Responsibilities Drive optimizations in large-scale LLM training pipelines, from infrastructure efficiency to model architecture refinements.Design and develop custom Triton/CUDA kernels and advanced training strategies to improve performance and scalability.Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure Falcon models are production-ready, memory-efficient, and performant across diverse hardware environments.Contribute to open-source integration efforts and continuously improve Falcon’s accessibility and adoption based on community feedback.Explore and apply advanced data processing and training strategies to unlock model performance across multiple domains.Stay current with the latest trends in LLMs, generative AI, and system-level ML optimizations, and translate them into practical enhancements.Requirements Strong proficiency in Python and C++, with proven experience in scalable software development.Hands-on experience with distributed training frameworks such as Megatron-LM, Deep Speed, FSDP, etc.Experience with large-scale data processing and optimizing model throughput and memory efficiency in deployment.Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with a drive to understand and improve the underlying mechanics of model performance.Experience with low-level optimization: CUDA, Triton kernels, low-precision training and inference acceleration.Demonstrated contributions to open-source projects related to ML, deep learning, or systems optimization.Strong communication and collaboration skills, with a willingness to lead engineering efforts and work across diverse teams.Deep curiosity and ownership mindset—willing to dig into metrics, logs, and performance reports to drive improvements.Qualifications Master’s or Ph.D. in Computer Science, AI, ML, or a related technical field.At TII, we help society to overcome its biggest hurdles through a rigorous approach to scientific discovery and inquiry, using state-of-the-art facilities and collaboration with leading international institutions. Our rigorous discovery and inquiry-based approach helps to forge new and disruptive breakthroughs in advanced materials, autonomous robotics, cryptography, digital security, directed energy, quantum computing and secure systems.Seniority level Seniority level Mid-Senior level Employment type Employment type Full-time Job function Job function Research Industries Research Services Referrals increase your chances of interviewing at Technology Innovation Institute by 2x Abu Dhabi Emirate, United Arab Emirates 2 days ago Machine Learning (LLM) Research Internship Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi Emirate, United Arab Emirates 1 month ago Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi Emirate, United Arab Emirates 1 month ago Abu Dhabi Emirate, United Arab Emirates 1 week ago Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi Emirate, United Arab Emirates 3 days ago Abu Dhabi Emirate, United Arab Emirates 4 weeks ago Abu Dhabi Emirate, United Arab Emirates 1 week ago Abu Dhabi Emirate, United Arab Emirates 2 days ago Abu Dhabi Emirate, United Arab Emirates 3 weeks ago Abu Dhabi Emirate, United Arab Emirates 1 week ago Environmental Engineer/Scientist (Abu Dhabi)Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi Emirate, United Arab Emirates 1 month ago Research Scientist in the Division of Engineering - Dr. Nidal Hilal We’re unlocking community knowledge in a new way. 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