---
title: 'Research Scientist (Singapore) at Cantina'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/research-scientist-singapore-cantina-singapore-ncn3srvv2xd4'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-12'
---

# Research Scientist (Singapore) at Cantina

- **Company:** Cantina
- **Location:** Singapore
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-05-12
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-12
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cantina/7053d1d4-a19b-44c6-9327-cc95cbedfb3b

## Job description

About Cantina: Cantina Labs is a social AI company, developing a suite of advanced real-time models that push the boundaries of expression, personality, and realism. We bring characters to life, transforming how people tell stories, connect, and create. We build and power ecosystems. Cantina, our flagship social AI platform, is just the beginning.

About the Role: Cantina is expanding, and we're looking for a Research Scientist to join our growing Singapore team! In this role, you will drive foundational research on video generation models, taking ownership across the full research cycle and driving post-training research. Furthermore, you'll collaborate closely with data, infrastructure, and adjacent modeling teams to translate research findings into durable model improvements.

What You’ll Do:

- Build and maintain scalable systems for ingesting, preprocessing, and delivering large-scale video data for model training
- Design and scale distributed data pipelines for preprocessing, dataset generation, and repeated dataset refreshes
- Own workflow orchestration, job scheduling, monitoring, and failure recovery for large-scale data processing jobs
- Implement and maintain containerized pipeline infrastructure using Kubernetes or equivalent orchestration systems
- Optimize cloud-based data storage and movement across providers (AWS, GCS, or Azure) for cost, throughput, and operational efficiency
- Define and implement best practices for dataset storage layout, versioning, caching, retention, and access patterns
- Build tooling to support deduplication workflows at scale, including near-dedup pipelines over large video corpora
- Research and develop distillation methods for large-scale diffusion and flow-based video generation models, including guidance distillation and adversarial distillation, with a focus on preserving or improving generation quality while reducing inference cost
- Develop reward models and preference-based fine-tuning pipelines that align video generation quality with human judgments across dimensions such as aesthetics, motion quality, and prompt adherence
- Analyze the relationship between base model behavior and post-training outcomes, and work with the foundation model team to inform pretraining decisions accordingly

What You’ll Bring:

- Strong hands-on experience building or scaling large-scale data systems or pipelines for machine learning workflows
- Experience with distributed data processing frameworks such as PySpark or Ray, and orchestration tools such as Airflow or equivalent
- Familiarity with containerization and container orchestration, including Docker and Kubernetes
- Experience working with cloud-based data storage and compute (AWS, GCS, and/or Azure), including tradeoffs around cost, throughput, storage layout, and access patterns
- Familiarity with video and media processing tools such as FFmpeg, PyAV, DALI, or OpenCV
- Familiarity with multimodal or media data, including video, image, text, and audio
- Strong research background in post-training methods for large-scale diffusion or flow-based generative models, with deep hands-on experience in distillation across both inference efficiency and quality preservation
- Experience with reward modeling or preference-based fine-tuning for generative models, including RLHF, DPO or equivalent alignment approaches
- Solid understanding of the interplay between pretraining and post-training, and how base model properties affect distillation and fine-tuning outcomes
- Proficiency in Python and modern machine learning frameworks, with a strong preference for PyTorch or JAX
- Track record of independent research, with the ability to drive projects from initial idea through experimental validation
- Publications at top-tier venues (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV) preferred
- Good understanding of the practical challenges involved in building reliable, scalable, and reproducible data workflows for machine learning systems

Benefits We Offer:

- Competitive salary and generous company equity
- Personal time off and paid holidays
- Health insurance
- Global travel insurance: Covers you when traveling internationally
- Monthly spending stipend: $500 (~S$635)
- Equipment: All equipment needed for your home office

## About Cantina

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Cantina is a social AI platform that lets users create, chat with, and share AI characters that talk, perform, and interact in real-time.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed Stage)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Not publicly listed; key leadership includes Co-Founder Prakash Ramakrishna

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Social AI / Social Media / Software Development
- **Target customers**: B2C (consumers), with a creator/developer ecosystem for building AI characters
- **Mission or purpose**: "Infinite Creativity Unlocked" — bringing AI characters to life to transform how people tell stories, connect, and create.

## Products & Services
- **Cantina App**: A social media platform where users chat with friends and AI, create video messages, share with friends, and "set bots free." The flagship product is a mobile-first experience focused on real-time AI character interaction.
- **Cantina AI Models**: A suite of advanced real-time models pushing the boundaries of expression, personality, and realism for AI characters.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding — Seed Round (1 investor, amount undisclosed); 148 employees as of mid-2026
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: 1 seed investor (name not publicly disclosed); member of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI)
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Headcount grew 7.2% YoY (+29 people) to 148 employees
  - Monthly website traffic growth of +47.7% and yearly growth of +149.8%
  - Active job postings: 13 (yearly job posting growth of +44.4%)
  - Operates in 15 countries with 4 offices (San Francisco HQ, Sunnyvale, Brooklyn NY, and another Brooklyn location)
  - High LinkedIn follower growth (+9.9% yearly) reaching 22,462 followers

## Competitive Advantages
- **Real-time AI character technology**: Builds proprietary real-time models for expression, personality, and realism — a technical moat in the rapidly growing social AI space.
- **Creator ecosystem**: Allows users to build and release their own AI characters, creating a network effect and UGC flywheel.
- **First-mover in social AI**: One of the earliest platforms combining social networking with generative AI characters for mass consumer use.
- **Strong talent pool**: Employees recruited from top tech companies including Airtime (18), Aircore (26), Meta (4), Grammarly (4), TikTok (4), Amazon (3), and BeReal (4).

## Strategic Focus
- **Product expansion**: Actively hiring for Kotlin Multiplatform Engineer, iOS Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer (Images), and Media Software Engineer (Speech) — indicating a push toward cross-platform mobile, image generation, and speech capabilities.
- **Safety and trust**: Joined the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) in 2025 and invested heavily in trust & safety infrastructure, signaling a commitment to responsible AI.
- **Monetization and growth**: Hiring a Head of Product Marketing, Creator Partner Manager, and Product Managers for Video and Web — suggesting moves toward monetization, creator partnerships, and web-based experiences.
- **Research-driven**: Actively recruiting ML engineers and research talent, with 10% of workforce in Research roles.

## Why Work Here
- **Cutting-edge AI work**: Engineers work on real-time AI models for speech, images, and character interaction — at the intersection of generative AI and social media.
- **Strong technical culture**: 66 employees (15% of workforce) in Technical roles, with a tech stack including PyTorch, TensorFlow, Kubernetes, Docker, GCP, Snowflake, and modern mobile frameworks (Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, Swift).
- **Growth stage**: At 148 employees and 13 open roles, this is a growth-stage startup where new hires can have outsized impact.
- **Flexible locations**: Offices in San Francisco (HQ), Sunnyvale, and Brooklyn (two locations) — with a distributed workforce across 15 countries.
- **Creative, fun environment**: Company culture emphasizes creativity ("Minister of Bots" is a real title) and viral social experiences.
- **Notable perks**: Team has a dedicated Comedy Director and "Chief Horse Officer" — indicating a playful, unconventional culture.
- **High talent density**: Recruits from top AI and social media companies (Meta, TikTok, Grammarly, Amazon, Apple, Netflix alumni).

## Sources
1. [cantina.com](https://cantina.com/)
2. [LinkedIn - Cantina Labs](https://www.linkedin.com/company/cantinaai)
3. [Cantina Careers (Ashby)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cantina)
4. [Cantina Careers Page](https://cantina.com/careers)

## Other roles at Cantina

- [Research Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/research-intern-cantina-singapore-0t2dg9nfd7y1) — Singapore
- [Machine Learning Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-intern-cantina-singapore-wnsca7rtewty) — Singapore
- [Product Manager, Growth - Lifecycle](https://feeny.ai/job/product-manager-growth-lifecycle-cantina-san-francisco-fs4n56y79qc2) — San Francisco, CA
- [Payments & Risk Operations Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/payments-risk-operations-manager-cantina-bay-area-8vxjey1a9qp4) — Bay Area, OR
- [Media Software Engineer, Speech (Senior-Staff Levels)](https://feeny.ai/job/media-software-engineer-speech-senior-staff-levels-cantina-sunnyvale-amr9rvpwq2gp) — Sunnyvale, CA
- [Machine Learning Engineer - Voice Conversion](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-voice-conversion-cantina-united-states-europe-fpbamgtxrfs0) — United States / Europe
- [Machine Learning Engineer, Speech - Joint Audio-Video Modeling](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-speech-joint-audio-video-modeling-cantina-united-81jhte7m6h5q) — United States / Europe
- [Machine Learning Engineer, Ops](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-ops-cantina-united-states-europe-zr6h1nf499dk) — United States / Europe
- [Director, Brand Marketing](https://feeny.ai/job/director-brand-marketing-cantina-los-angeles-dhngs7psnehq) — Los Angeles, CA
- [Senior Creative Strategist, Performance Marketing](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-creative-strategist-performance-marketing-cantina-remote-gxzcxj5fv99e)