---
title: 'Applied Scientist III - VLM R&D at wyzecam.com'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/applied-scientist-iii-vlm-r-d-wyzecam-com-kirkland-1kx5kzcbemqj'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-05'
---

# Applied Scientist III - VLM R&D at wyzecam.com

- **Company:** wyzecam.com
- **Location:** Kirkland, WA
- **Compensation:** $134k–$181k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-07-20
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/wyzecam-com/am9icG9zdDrv4e34f2DMX7L7gpUFOG2L

## Job description

The Opportunity We are looking for an Applied Scientist to drive the development of our in-house vision-language models (VLMs) for smart home video understanding. In this role, you will track breakthrough research from academia and the broader AI community, and rapidly translate it into our production VLM development. You will help build the next generation of smart home physical AI — foundation models that understand the physical world of the home.

You will work with tens of millions of authorized videos to deeply investigate user event patterns and build a physical smart home foundation model that impacts over 10 million Wyze households. We believe in advancing the field, not just our product: we encourage publishing your research and releasing open-source models and datasets to benefit the broader community. This is a rare opportunity to shape a category-defining product at the intersection of frontier multimodal research and real-world deployment at massive scale.

## What You'll Do

- Follow the latest breakthroughs in multimodal and vision-language research from academia and industry, evaluate their relevance, and apply them to our in-house VLM development for smart home video understanding
- Train, fine-tune, and evaluate multimodal vision-language models on large-scale, real-world home video data
- Design and run rigorous evaluation pipelines to measure model quality on video understanding tasks such as event detection, activity recognition, and temporal reasoning
- Investigate user event patterns across tens of millions of authorized videos to inform model design and product direction
- Contribute to the architecture and training of a physical smart home foundation model, drawing on advances in visual transformers, physical world foundation models, and embodied AI
- Build rapid proofs of concept using AI-assisted research and development workflows, and carry promising directions from idea to validated prototype
- Publish research at top venues and contribute open-source models and datasets that help advance the community
- Help define research problems, set technical direction, and anticipate where academic research and industry solutions are heading

## What We're Looking For

- PhD in Computer Vision, Machine Learning, or a related field; or a Master's degree with a strong track record of research or applied impact (publications, open-source contributions, or shipped ML systems)
- Hands-on experience training and evaluating multimodal vision-language models
- Experience in one or more of: visual transformer algorithm innovation, physical world foundation models, or embodied AI
- Strong research sense: the ability to define the right problems, choose promising directions, and predict how research trends will translate into industry solutions
- Proficiency with AI-assisted research and fast POC development — you use modern AI tools to multiply your own research velocity
- Solid engineering skills in Python and deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch), with the ability to work with large-scale video data pipelines

## Nice to Have

- Publications at top venues (CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, or similar)
- Experience with video understanding, long-context temporal modeling, or efficient inference for edge/cloud deployment
- Experience deploying ML models in consumer products at scale

## About wyzecam.com

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Wyze makes affordable smart home security cameras and devices, aiming to democratize access to smart home technology.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B, $155M total funding)
- **Headquarters**: Kirkland, Washington, United States
- **Founded**: 2017
- **Founders**: Yun Zhang, Dongsheng Song, Dave Crosby, Elana Fishman

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Smart Home Technology / Consumer Electronics
- Target customers: B2C (homeowners, renters, small businesses)
- Mission statement: "Be Friends With Users" — to make great technology accessible to everyone through an affordable smart home platform.

## Products & Services
- **Wyze Cam (various models)**: Indoor/outdoor security cameras with HD video, night vision, motion alerts, and AI features (e.g., Solar Cam Pan 2K, Window Cam, Duo Cam Pan). Type: Hardware + SaaS.
- **Video Doorbell**: Battery-powered doorbell camera with color night vision and microSD storage. Type: Hardware.
- **Wyze Lock Bolt v2**: Smart lock with fingerprint recognition, BHMA Grade 2 security, and 8-month battery life. Type: Hardware.
- **Wyze Home Monitoring**: 24/7 professional home security monitoring system. Type: Service.
- **Wyze BodyScan**: AI-powered health/body analysis device. Type: Hardware + AI.
- **Wyze App**: Central app for device control, livestreams, and AI chat agent. Type: Mobile App / Platform.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed (last Series B in 2021)
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue ~$61.1M (latest estimate); Total Funding $155M
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Norwest Venture Partners (lead investor in Series A), Marcy Venture Partners (lead in Series B), and others.
- **Growth Signals**: Trusted by over 12 million households; named one of *Time* magazine’s most influential companies of 2022; 152 employees (+12.9% YoY); strong talent pipeline from Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Radical affordability**: Products priced dramatically below competitors (e.g., first camera launched at $19.99 vs. ~$200 for comparable brands).
- **Customer-centric philosophy**: "Be Friends With Users" drives product development, pricing, and support transparency.
- **Integrated AI**: In-house AI for person tracking, smart alerts, and health analysis, differentiating from basic camera vendors.
- **Large installed base**: Over 12 million households create a strong ecosystem lock-in and data advantage for AI improvements.

## Strategic Focus
- **Expanding the smart home ecosystem**: Adding new product categories (e.g., BodyScan, smart locks, home monitoring) to deepen customer relationships.
- **AI and subscription growth**: Pushing AI-powered features and subscription services (e.g., Home Monitoring, Cam Plus) for recurring revenue.
- **International expansion**: Growing presence beyond the US (offices in China, Canada, Philippines, Switzerland).
- **Product innovation**: Continuing to launch "too good to be true" products that disrupt price/performance norms.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Described as rooted in relationships, transparency, and authenticity. Co-founders came from Amazon and brought customer-obsession principles. Voted one of the best places to work in Seattle.
- **Perks**: 100% paid employee premiums for benefits (family coverage partially covered); 24 days of PTO; 12 holidays (8 set + 4 floating); free product selection for new hires; employee discounts.
- **Work Environment**: Hybrid/office presence in Kirkland, WA (multiple offices in the area). Global team across 6 countries.
- **Engineering Culture**: Strong technical team (45% of staff in technical roles). Emphasis on AI, cloud platform, and hardware-software integration. Notable alumni from Amazon, Microsoft, Google.
- **Growth**: 12.9% YoY headcount growth with active hiring in product management, software engineering, supply chain, and finance.
- **Considerations**: Employer rating is 2.9/5 (80 reviews) with lower scores for work-life balance (2.5) and compensation (2.5) — may indicate high pressure or below-market pay relative to Big Tech.

## Sources
1. [wyze.com - Careers](https://www.wyze.com/pages/careers)
2. [linkedin.com/company/wyzelabs](https://linkedin.com/company/wyzelabs)
3. [wyze.com - Official Site](https://www.wyze.com/)
4. [global.wyze.com - About Wyze](https://global.wyze.com/en-co/pages/about-wyze)
5. [cbinsights.com - Wyze Labs](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/wyze-labs)

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