Research Scientist, Semantic Scholar Research Semantic Scholar Seattle, WA

Remote hybrid:

Persons in these roles are expected to spend part of their time on-site in our Seattle offices and may occasionally work remotely from their home in the Greater Seattle area. On-site requirements vary based on position and team. If you have questions about Hybrid work arrangements for this role, please ask your recruiter.

Compensation Range: $167,030 - $260,570

Who You Are:

As a Research Scientist on our team, you’ll have the unique opportunity to work on research problems that can improve the productivity and discovery experience of scientists through the development of intelligent research assistants and platforms like Semantic Scholar (semanticscholar.org).

We collaborate frequently with researchers on other Ai2 teams focused on natural language processing and computer vision, among others. Our main office has close ties and unique access to researchers at the University of Washington, only 1.5 miles away. Researchers excited about such internal and external collaborations are encouraged to apply.

All scientists with an interest in researching how AI can accelerate science are encouraged to apply, and in the current hiring cycle we are especially interested in the following areas:

• Model distillation and specialization
• Agentic planning, reasoning, and learning

We are considering applications on a rolling basis. The deadline of the first round of applications is on November 1st, 2024 .

Who We Are:

Semantic Scholar Research at the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) is an interdisciplinary research team focused on AI, HCI, ML, NLP, accessibility, and computational social science in support of our mission of accelerating science. Our research powers open platforms and tools that assist scholars in performing scientific research tasks (e.g., literature discovery and synthesis, hypothesis generation, etc.) such as the Semantic Scholar platform and intelligent research assistants. We regularly publish in high-profile conferences and journals in NLP (e.g., ACL, EMNLP), HCI (e.g., CHI, UIST, CSCW), ML (e.g., NeurIPS, ICLR), IR (e.g., SIGIR), Accessibility (ASSETS), and other areas.

Research Scientists on our team contribute to Ai2's impact-driven mission in an exciting, fast-paced research environment.

Essential Functions:

• Conduct high-impact research, lead research projects, and author scientific papers for publication in high-profile computing conferences and journals.
• Collaborate with and learn from team members across Ai2, including scientists and engineers.
• Mentor early-career researchers and interns on their projects.
• Implement and share open source software to improve access to our research.
• Help develop collaborative relationships with relevant academic, industrial, government, and standards organizations.

What You’ll Need:

• One year or less from completing your PhD, or already have a PhD in Computer Science or related field, with specific focus in one or more of our team’s active research areas.
• A strong publication record in AI-related areas. Example venues include ACL, CHI, ICLR, EMNLP, SIGIR, KDD, WWW, CVPR, NeurIPS, and ICML. Contributions to research communities (e.g. workshop organization, tutorials) are a plus.
• Strong software engineering skills. Experience with deep learning frameworks (e.g. PyTorch, Tensorflow). Contributions to open-source research libraries (e.g. AllenNLP, spaCy) are a plus.

Physical Demands and Work Environment:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by a team member to successfully perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the functions.

• Must be able to remain in a stationary position for long periods of time.
• The ability to communicate information and ideas so others will understand. Must be able to exchange accurate information in these situations.
• The ability to observe details at close range.

A Little More About Ai2:

Ai2 is a Seattle based non-profit AI research institute founded in 2014 by the late Paul Allen. Our mission is building breakthrough AI to solve the world’s biggest problems. We develop foundational AI research and innovation to deliver real-world impact through large-scale open models, data, robotics, conservation, and beyond.

In addition to Ai2’s core mission, we also aim to contribute to humanity through our treatment of each member of the Ai2 Team. Some highlights are:

• We are a learning organization – because everything Ai2 does is ground-breaking, we are learning every day. Similarly, through weekly Ai2 Academy lectures, a wide variety of world-class AI experts as guest speakers, and our commitment to your personal ongoing education, Ai2 is a place where you will have opportunities to continue learning alongside your coworkers.
• We value diversity – We seek to hire, support, and promote people from all genders, ethnicities, and all levels of experience regardless of age. We particularly encourage applications from women, non-binary individuals, people of color, members of the LGBTQA+ community, and people with disabilities of any kind.
• We value inclusion – We understand the value that people's individual experiences and perspectives can bring to an organization, and we are building a culture in which all voices are heard, respected and considered.
• We emphasize a healthy work/life balance – we believe our team members are happiest and most productive when their work/life balance is optimized. While we value powerful research results which drive our mission forward, we also value dinner with family, weekend time, and vacation time. We offer generous paid vacation and sick leave as well as family leave.
• We are collaborative and transparent – we consider ourselves a team, all moving with a common purpose. We are quick to cheer our successes, and even quicker to share and jointly problem solve our failures.
• We are in Seattle – and our office is on the water! We have mountains, we have lakes, we have four seasons, we bike to work, we have a vibrant theater scene, and we have so much else. We even have kayaks for you to paddle right outside our front door. We welcome interest from applicants from outside of the United States.
• We are friendly – chances are you will like every one of the 200+ (and growing) people who work here. We do.

Ai2 is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

This employer participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to employees and applicants with disabilities to the full extent required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). If you feel you need a reasonable accommodation pursuant to the ADA, you are encouraged to contact us at