About the job
Netflix is one of the world's leading entertainment services, with over 300 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, films and games across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can play, pause and resume watching as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, and can change their plans at any time.
As Netflix grows, we keep advancing innovations in personalization and discovery, experimentation and decision-making, understanding our members and our titles, and backend infrastructure. These developments constantly create new opportunities for research to drive meaningful impact. By exploring the frontiers of AI/ML and intersecting fields, the Machine Learning and Inference Research team turns these opportunities into tangible benefits for our members and our business.
The Machine Learning and Inference Research team is a dedicated research team building up Netflix’s technical capabilities by tackling fundamental research questions tied to our most important challenges and partnering closely with teams across the business to translate research into impact at scale. As a member of the team, you will leverage your technical expertise to shape roadmaps, collaborate across functions, and bring new ideas from exploration to impact. You will also engage actively with the broader research community by publishing at top venues, presenting at conferences, mentoring interns, and fostering academic collaborations.
We are seeking an experienced researcher who can establish and execute a strong research agenda in AI alignment science, pursue both internal and external impact, disseminate knowledge effectively and inspire others, collaborate with colleagues to deliver tangible business value, and help foster an open environment of innovation, intellectual rigor, and curiosity. This role will pursue frontier, foundational research that shapes the direction of the field and influences how Netflix develops and applies advanced AI systems across internal workflows and member-facing products.
Responsibilities
Establish and execute a strong research agenda in AI alignment science
Pursue frontier, foundational research that shapes the direction of the field and influences how Netflix develops and applies advanced AI systems
Leverage technical expertise to shape roadmaps, collaborate across functions, and bring new ideas from exploration to impact
Engage actively with the broader research community by publishing at top venues, presenting at conferences, mentoring interns, and fostering academic collaborations
Collaborate with colleagues to deliver tangible business value and help foster an open environment of innovation, intellectual rigor, and curiosity
Qualifications
Minimum
Track record of research excellence in the post-training and alignment of foundation models and agentic systems, with expertise in areas such as reinforcement learning, preference optimization and reward modeling, reasoning and test-time inference, model distillation, agent scaffolding and evaluation, multi-agent systems, memory and long-horizon interaction, calibration and uncertainty, interpretability, robustness, or safety
Ph.D. in a relevant area, with at least 2 years of post-Ph.D. experience in industry and/or academia
Experience in applying research (especially your own) to transform real-world problems in collaboration with engineering and business teams
Extensive research experience, in industry and/or academia, including as evidenced in top-tier publications
Recognized for both technical expertise and the impact you drive, and trusted by stakeholders for collaboration, guidance, problem‑solving, and decision‑making
Excellent judgment in identifying and framing ambiguous research and business problems and the links between the two
Demonstrated ability to collaborate and build strong working relationships with colleagues and stakeholders to tackle big, cross-functional problems
Effective communication with technical, non-technical, and mixed audiences
Able to operate autonomously, take ownership in environments with minimal oversight, and lead work effectively with lightweight processes
Uplevels the greater org through sharing knowledge and guiding thought on the adoption of new methods. Actively mentors others and is sought out as a mentor
Preferred
No preferred qualifications listed.