Principal Research Engineer - AI Innovation and Development

1 Year ago • All levels • Research Development • $167,000 PA - $262,000 PA

Job Summary

Job Description

As a Principal Research Engineer, you will build, train, and deploy FICO's Foundational AI models. Your expertise will shape the technology and architecture of innovations across natural language, transactional, speech, vision, and other modalities. You will design and advance AI models and system innovations in collaboration with Product Management, Software Engineering, and Pre-Sales. Responsibilities include developing Focused Language Models, implementing novel architectures like transformers, optimizing distributed training pipelines using PyTorch/CUDA, and analyzing large datasets to identify optimal modeling techniques. You will also communicate findings to high-level stakeholders and mentor scientists. This role requires excellent software engineering skills in Python, Rust, or C++, experience with AI architectures and distributed systems, and potentially Reinforcement Learning. The role is full-time and on-site in San Diego, California, with willingness to travel up to 10%.
Must have:
  • Excellent software engineering skills in Python, Rust, and/or C++
  • Experience with pre/post training of modern AI architectures
  • Real-world experience with distributed systems and concurrency
  • MS or PhD in Computer Science or related fields
  • Full-time, on-site presence required
Good to have:
  • Experience with Reinforcement Learning (RL), Simulation, and/or Synthetic Data Generation
  • Prior experience managing, scaling, and delivering AI/ML projects
Perks:
  • Inclusive culture with strong core values
  • Opportunity for professional development and learning experiences
  • Highly competitive compensation, benefits, and rewards programs
  • Engaging, people-first work environment with work/life balance
  • Employee resource groups and social events

Job Details

FICO (NYSE: FICO) is a leading global analytics software company, helping businesses in 100+ countries make better decisions. Join our world-class team today and fulfil your career potential!

The Opportunity

"As a Principal Research Engineer, you’ll have a unique opportunity to build, train and deploy FICO’s diverse range of Foundational AI models. As part of our dynamic team, your expertise will play a crucial role in shaping the technology and architecture of our latest innovations, which encompasses domains across natural language, transactional, speech, vision and other modalities." – Senior Director, AI Innovation and Development.

What You’ll Contribute

  • Design and advance AI models and system innovations in close collaboration with cross-functional teams, including Product Management, Software Engineering, and Pre-Sales—to ensure high-quality performance and delivery.

  • Develop Focused Language Models, which are LLMs designed to solve our customers’ business problems in areas such as fraud, collections, financial services operations, financial education and FICO Platform software.  Implement novel architectures (transformers and others), optimizing distributed training pipelines (Pytorch/CUDA) for efficient pre and post training, building domain specific datasets and business-relevant benchmarks. 

  • Communicating to high-level stakeholders internally and externally.

  • Conduct hands-on analysis of large historical datasets to identify the best modeling techniques, demonstrating expertise in various algorithms and modeling processes with cutting-edge machine learning techniques.

  • Guide and mentor scientists to support their career development.

  • Drive innovation and inorganic growth of new and existing products through offering and promoting refined ideas.

What We’re Seeking

  • Excellent software engineering skills, experience in Python, Rust and/or C++. 

  • Experience with pre/post training of modern AI architectures (transformers, encoders, decoders, diffusion).

  • Real-world experience with distributed systems and concurrency.

  • Experience with Reinforcement Learning (RL), Simulation and/or Synthetic Data Generation.

  • Prior experience managing, scaling and delivering high-quality, on-time AI/ML projects.

  • MS or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, or related fields.

  • Requires full-time, on-site presence at the FICO office in San Diego, CA.

  • Willingness to travel up to 10%.

Our Offer to You

  • An inclusive culture strongly reflecting our core values:  Act Like an Owner, Delight Our Customers and Earn the Respect of Others.

  • The opportunity to make an impact and develop professionally by leveraging your unique strengths and participating in valuable learning experiences.

  • Highly competitive compensation, benefits and rewards programs that encourage you to bring your best every day and be recognized for doing so.

  • An engaging, people-first work environment offering work/life balance, employee resource groups, and social events to promote interaction and camaraderie.

  • The targeted base pay range for this role is: $167,000 to $262,000 with this range reflecting differences in candidate knowledge, skills and experience.
     

Why Make a Move to FICO?

At FICO, you can develop your career with a leading organization in one of the fastest-growing fields in technology today – Big Data analytics.  You’ll play a part in our commitment to help businesses use data to improve every choice they make, using advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, optimization, and much more.


FICO makes a real difference in the way businesses operate worldwide:

•    Credit Scoring — FICO® Scores are used by 90 of the top 100 US lenders.

•    Fraud Detection and Security — 4 billion payment cards globally are protected by FICO fraud systems.

•    Lending — 3/4 of US mortgages are approved using the FICO Score.

Global trends toward digital transformation have created tremendous demand for FICO’s solutions, placing us among the world’s top 100 software companies by revenue. We help many of the world’s largest banks, insurers, retailers, telecommunications providers and other firms reach a new level of success. Our success is dependent on really talented people – just like you – who thrive on the collaboration and innovation that’s nurtured by a diverse and inclusive environment. We’ll provide the support you need, while ensuring you have the freedom to develop your skills and grow your career.  Join FICO and help change the way business thinks!

Learn more about how you can fulfil your potential at www.fico.com/Careers

FICO promotes a culture of inclusion and seeks to attract a diverse set of candidates for each job opportunity. We are an equal employment opportunity employer and we’re proud to offer employment and advancement opportunities to all candidates without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, pregnancy, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. Research has shown that women and candidates from underrepresented communities may not apply for an opportunity if they don’t meet all stated qualifications. While our qualifications are clearly related to role success, each candidate’s profile is unique and strengths in certain skill and/or experience areas can be equally effective. If you believe you have many, but not necessarily all, of the stated qualifications we encourage you to apply.

Information submitted with your application is subject to the FICO Privacy policy at https://www.fico.com/en/privacy-policy

Similar Jobs

deel. - Business Operations Manager, Payroll Strategy

deel.

United States (Remote)
2 Weeks ago
Alphawave Semi - Digital Marketing Program Specialist

Alphawave Semi

San Jose, California, United States (On-Site)
2 Months ago
Shield AI - Product Marketing Manager, Hivemind Contractor

Shield AI

United States (On-Site)
2 Weeks ago
Juego Studios - Senior Project Manager

Juego Studios

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India (On-Site)
4 Weeks ago
Adyen - Team Lead, Account Management Strategy and Execution

Adyen

Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands (On-Site)
1 Month ago
Deepgram - Research Scientist - Voice AI Foundations

Deepgram

California, United States (Remote)
2 Months ago
bytedance - Senior Software Engineer - IaaS AI Infra

bytedance

Seattle, Washington, United States (On-Site)
5 Months ago
Sailpoint - Manager, Engineering Operations - AI

Sailpoint

Austin, Texas, United States (On-Site)
1 Month ago
Moloco - Staff Machine Learning Engineer

Moloco

Seoul, South Korea (On-Site)
2 Months ago
Microsoft - Senior Applied Researcher

Microsoft

Redmond, Washington, United States (On-Site)
3 Months ago

Get notifed when new similar jobs are uploaded

Similar Skill Jobs

Nine - Commercial Brand Executive

Nine

North Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (On-Site)
2 Weeks ago
Semgrep - Senior Program Analysis Engineer

Semgrep

(Remote)
3 Weeks ago
Adyen - Enterprise Account Manager

Adyen

New York, United States (On-Site)
2 Months ago
Mcdonalds - Senior Manager - Mobile App Development

Mcdonalds

Mexico City, Mexico (On-Site)
2 Weeks ago
Go Fund Me - Manager, Recruiting (LATAM)

Go Fund Me

Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina (Hybrid)
2 Weeks ago
Pinterest - Senior Software Engineer

Pinterest

Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland (Hybrid)
3 Weeks ago
MiQ - Chief of Staff

MiQ

Chicago, Illinois, United States (On-Site)
2 Weeks ago
Beta Craft - Senior NodeJS Developer

Beta Craft

Pune, Maharashtra, India (On-Site)
1 Year ago
Minecast - Senior Engineering Manager - Threat Protection

Minecast

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India (Hybrid)
3 Months ago
Vertx Inc. - Manager, Strategy

Vertx Inc.

United States (Remote)
1 Year ago

Get notifed when new similar jobs are uploaded

Jobs in San Diego, California, United States

Riot Games - Principal UX Designer

Riot Games

Los Angeles, California, United States (On-Site)
2 Months ago
Activision - Expert Animation Engineer

Activision

Los Angeles, California, United States (On-Site)
5 Months ago
HCL Tech - Product Specialist

HCL Tech

Texas, United States (On-Site)
2 Months ago
Interface AI - Technical Program Manager

Interface AI

San Francisco, California, United States (On-Site)
1 Month ago
SimpliSafe - Manager, Product Management - Platform Services

SimpliSafe

Boston, Massachusetts, United States (Hybrid)
1 Month ago
GoMotive - Underwriting Manager, Risk Operations Management

GoMotive

United States (Remote)
3 Months ago
Next Level Business Services - SAP C4C Functional consultant

Next Level Business Services

Charlotte, North Carolina, United States (On-Site)
9 Months ago
UPF Industries  - General Labor

UPF Industries

Prattville, Alabama, United States (On-Site)
2 Weeks ago
Granicus - Senior Solution Advisor

Granicus

United States (Remote)
2 Months ago
Apple - Engineering Project Manager

Apple

San Diego, California, United States (On-Site)
1 Month ago

Get notifed when new similar jobs are uploaded

Research Development Jobs

Ansys - Senior Backend R&D Engineer

Ansys

Montigny-le-Bretonneux, Île-de-France, France (Remote)
2 Months ago
Meta - Research Engineer - Conversational AI - Reality Labs

Meta

Menlo Park, California, United States (On-Site)
3 Months ago
Notion - User Researcher

Notion

New York, United States (On-Site)
1 Month ago
HP - Senior Machine Learning Researcher, On-Device Optimization

HP

Palo Alto, California, United States (On-Site)
3 Weeks ago
Krafton - Physical AI Team Internship

Krafton

Seoul, South Korea (On-Site)
1 Month ago
Eqvilent - DL RESEARCHER

Eqvilent

(Remote)
8 Months ago
Roblox - Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Marketplace - PhD New Grad

Roblox

San Mateo, California, United States (On-Site)
1 Month ago
Reality Defender - Machine Learning Engineer

Reality Defender

New York, New York, United States (Remote)
9 Months ago
Scale AI - Machine Learning Engineer, Enterprise GenAI

Scale AI

San Francisco, California, United States (On-Site)
3 Months ago
Google - Staff Software Engineer, AI/ML Recommendations, Rankings, Predictions, YouTube

Google

Mountain View, California, United States (On-Site)
3 Months ago

Get notifed when new similar jobs are uploaded

About The Company

FICO (NYSE: FICO)is a leading global analytics software company, helping businesses in 100+ countries make better decisions. Join our world-class team today and fulfil your career potential!

United States (Remote)

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India (On-Site)

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India (On-Site)

Bozeman, Montana, United States (Remote)

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India (On-Site)

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India (On-Site)

United States (Remote)

View All Jobs

Get notified when new jobs are added by FICO

Level Up Your Career in Game Development!

Transform Your Passion into Profession with Our Comprehensive Courses for Aspiring Game Developers.

Job Common Plug