Director, Applied Research

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in New York.

📋 Description

• Lead and cultivate a high-performing applied science team focused on agentic AI for tax and accounting professionals.

• Spearhead the design and implementation of AI features that transform customer workflows in high-stakes, accuracy-critical environments.

• Provide guidance to Labs leadership, product leadership, and business stakeholders concerning long-term AI strategy, partnerships, and capability roadmaps.

• Shape product strategy through technical expertise, usage data, quality metrics, and customer insights.

• Enhance operational methods across R&D and product engineering in a dynamic delivery cycle.

• Collaborate with domain and subject matter experts during concept development and design workshops.

• Promote a culture of innovation, rigor, collaboration, and ongoing learning.

⛳️ Requirements

• PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field, or a Master's degree with equivalent experience, strong scientific background, and relevant publication history.

• Over 10 years of practical industry experience in building AI/ML systems for commercial applications.

• Recent direct hands-on experience in developing LLM-based and agentic AI systems in production for complex use cases.

• More than 5 years of experience in managing and developing high-performing applied science or ML teams.

• Proven success in product- or customer-facing roles where business and customer impact were the primary metrics of success.

• Sufficient technical depth in AI/ML to challenge concepts and support high-quality technical decisions.

• Preferred: robust technical knowledge in information retrieval and NLP, including taxonomy induction, document understanding, agentic search, knowledge graphs, or neuro-symbolic methods.

• Preferred: experience with AI agent evaluation, language model training with verifiable rewards, and synthetic data generation.

• Preferred: publications in ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, NeurIPS, ICLR, SIGIR, KDD, or equivalent conferences.

• Preferred: experience in creating AI solutions for tax, legal, audit, or accounting sectors.

• Preferred: a track record of growth at leading technology companies or high-growth startups.

🏝️ Benefits

• Flexible work arrangements, including the option to work from anywhere for up to 8 weeks each year.

• Flexible vacation policies.

• Two company-wide Mental Health Days off.

• Access to the Headspace app.

• Retirement savings plans.

• Tuition reimbursement opportunities.

• Employee incentive programs.

• Resources supporting mental, physical, and financial wellbeing.

• Two paid volunteer days off each year.

• Opportunities for pro-bono consulting projects and ESG initiatives.

• Health, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance programs.

• Competitive 401(k) plan with company matching.

• Generous vacation, sick, and safe paid time off.

• Paid holidays, including two designated mental health days off.

• Parental leave provisions.

• Sabbatical leave options.

• Optional hospital, accident, and sickness insurance.

• Optional life and AD&D insurance.

• Flexible Spending and Health Savings Accounts.

• Fitness reimbursement programs.

• Employee Assistance Program.

• Group Legal Identity Theft Protection benefit.

• Access to 529 Plan.

• Commuter benefits.

• Adoption & Surrogacy Assistance.

• Employee Stock Purchase Plan.

• Career development, continuous learning, and skills development initiatives.