---
title: 'Research Scientist - Vision Language Model at Institute of Foundation Models'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/research-scientist-vision-language-model-institute-of-foundation-models-nhb2k7qdnz6s'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-07'
---

# Research Scientist - Vision Language Model at Institute of Foundation Models

- **Company:** Institute of Foundation Models
- **Location:** Sunnyvale, CA
- **Compensation:** $150k–$450k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-05-29
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/ifm-us/1f5c0611-5364-4155-91f8-6884e6757385

## Job description

## About the Institute of Foundation Models

We are a dedicated research lab for building, understanding, using, and risk-managing foundation models. Our mandate is to advance research, nurture the next generation of AI builders, and drive transformative contributions to a knowledge-driven economy.

As part of our team, you’ll have the opportunity to work on the core of cutting-edge foundation model training, alongside world-class researchers, data scientists, and engineers, tackling the most fundamental and impactful challenges in AI development. You will participate in the development of groundbreaking AI solutions that have the potential to reshape entire industries. Strategic and innovative problem-solving skills will be instrumental in establishing MBZUAI as a global hub for high-performance computing in deep learning, driving impactful discoveries that inspire the next generation of AI pioneers.

Position Summary As a Research Scientist in the Vision Language Model (VLM) team, your role will be central to advancing state-of-the-art multimodal foundation models that integrate visual understanding, reasoning, and agentic capabilities. You will work on the research and development of large-scale VLM systems, spanning model architectures, data recipes for pre-training and post-training, and evaluation benchmarks. The role combines cutting-edge research with practical engineering, emphasizing large-scale data processing, filtering, and weighting pipelines, distributed training systems, and reinforcement learning algorithms and systems for multimodal reasoning and agent development.

## Key Responsibilities

- Research and development of next-generation Vision Language Models across pre-training, instruction tuning, reasoning, and agents.

- Develop novel architectures and training methodologies for integrating visual understanding, language reasoning, and tool-use capabilities.

- Research efficient multimodal learning techniques, including data-efficient training, long-context modeling, model modularity, and inference optimization.

- Build and improve large-scale multimodal datasets, synthetic data generation pipelines, and evaluation benchmarks for VLM capabilities.

- Investigate multimodal reasoning, agentic behavior, OCR, grounding, document understanding, chart understanding, and visual question answering capabilities.

- Contribute to technical reports, research publications, and open-source software.

- Represent MBZUAI at research conferences and industry events, showcasing advancements in multimodal foundation models and large-scale AI systems.

- Mentor junior researchers and collaborate across teams to drive impactful research initiatives.

Academic Qualifications PhD or equivalent research experience in Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, or Multimodal AI.

## About Institute of Foundation Models

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: The Institute of Foundation Models (IFM) is a global AI research lab dedicated to the open and independent development of frontier-class foundation models, operating under the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI).
- **Entity Type**: Academic Research Institute (part of MBZUAI, a university)
- **Headquarters**: Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (with labs in Sunnyvale, CA, USA and Paris, France)
- **Founded**: 2026 (launched with Silicon Valley lab)
- **Founders**: Part of MBZUAI, led by President Eric Xing

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Artificial Intelligence research, foundation model development, open-source AI
- **Target customers**: Researchers, academia, industry partners, and the global AI community (B2B/Research/Public sector)
- **Mission**: To produce the world’s leading models across modalities while ensuring responsible, open, and socially meaningful impact.

## Products & Services
For each major offering:
- **JAIS Series**: State-of-the-art open-source Arabic LLM covering Modern Standard Arabic and regional dialects, including Moroccan Arabic (Darija). Fully documented training lifecycle.
- **Vicuna**: Lightweight open chatbot surpassing 90% of ChatGPT and Bard quality.
- **K2 (K2-65B)**: Large language model with advanced reasoning capabilities, focusing on sustainable performance. Updated version soon to be released.
- **PAN World Model**: Next-gen foundation model for embodied reasoning and physical-world simulation, integrating multimodal inputs (language, video, spatial data, physical actions). Includes PAN-Agent for multimodal reasoning tasks.
- **FM For Bio – GET**: Domain-specific model for biology.
- **LLM360**: Open-source framework enhancing transparency and collaboration in LLM research, providing training code, datasets, and model checkpoints.
- **Research partnerships**: Collaboration with academia, startups, and enterprises via shared compute, co-publishing, and co-development.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not applicable (non-commercial research institute)
- **Key Metric**: Funded by MBZUAI; specific budget not publicly disclosed. Notable open-source model releases (JAIS, Vicuna, K2, PAN).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: MBZUAI, with international advisory boards and peer review processes. Partnerships with industry leaders, academic institutions, and public organizations.
- **Growth Signals**: Launch of Silicon Valley lab in Sunnyvale, CA (2026); expansion into Paris and Abu Dhabi nodes; active hiring for research interns, distributed ML engineers, HPC engineers; release of flagship models (PAN, K2 update).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Openness & transparency**: Full release of training code, datasets, and model checkpoints through LLM360 – one of the most transparent approaches in AI.
- **Global research network**: Three hubs (Abu Dhabi, Silicon Valley, Paris) combining academic rigor with startup agility.
- **Access to large-scale compute**: High-performance computing infrastructure for training frontier models.
- **Multilingual & cultural focus**: JAIS addresses underrepresentation of Arabic and other languages, preserving cultural authenticity.
- **World model innovation**: PAN differentiates from text-only models by predicting comprehensive world states for advanced reasoning and simulation.

## Strategic Focus
- Continue building open, powerful foundation models across language, vision, multimodal, and domain-specific systems.
- Expand global collaboration and talent acquisition, especially in Silicon Valley.
- Advance responsible AI with safety systems and international advisory boards.
- Drive real-world impact through partnerships in scientific discovery, human-AI interaction, and public good.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Collaborative, cutting-edge academic research environment with a mission to open-source AI for global benefit. Teams span Abu Dhabi, Paris, and Silicon Valley.
- **Remote/hybrid/office**: All listed roles are **on-site** (Sunnyvale, CA or Abu Dhabi). No remote policy indicated.
- **Notable perks**: Work with world-class researchers, access to large-scale compute, opportunity to publish and contribute to open-source models. The institute combines the agility of a startup with the resources of an established university.
- **Current openings**: AI Research Internship (LLM), Distributed Machine Learning Engineer, Eval360 Error Analysis Engineer, High Performance Computing Software Engineer (Supercomputing) – all on-site in Sunnyvale or Abu Dhabi.

## Sources
1. [ifm.ai](https://ifm.ai/)
2. [ifm.ai/about](https://ifm.ai/about/)
3. [jobs.lever.co/ifm-us](https://jobs.lever.co/ifm-us)
4. [LinkedIn – Institute of Foundation Models](https://www.linkedin.com/company/institute-of-foundation-models)
5. [MBZUAI News – Launch of IFM and Silicon Valley Lab](https://mbzuai.ac.ae/news/mbzuai-launches-institute-of-foundation-models-and-establishes-silicon-valley-ai-lab/)

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