AI Research Scientist - SLM and Voice

Remote Work: Hybrid

At Zebra, we are a community of innovators who come together to create new ways of working. United by curiosity and a culture of caring, we develop smart solutions that anticipate our customer’s and partner’s needs and solve their challenges. Being a part of Zebra Nation means you are seen, heard, valued, and respected. Drawing from our unique perspectives, we collaborate to deliver on our purpose. Here you are a part of a team pushing boundaries today to redefine the work of tomorrow for organizations, their employees, and those they serve. You’ll have opportunities to learn and lead in a forward‑thinking environment, defining your path to a fulfilling career while channeling your skills toward causes you care about – locally and globally.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and deploy machine learning models for classification and retrieval tasks.
• Fine‑tune and distill small language models (SLMs) for specific use cases, utilizing retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), foundation model APIs, and advanced prompt engineering.
• Work on audio and voice manipulation tasks, including text‑to‑speech (TTS) and speech‑to‑text (STT).
• Utilize tools such as Hydra for configuration management and Weights & Biases to track and manage experiments.
• Handle and manipulate large datasets to prepare them for machine learning model development and evaluation.
• Collaborate effectively in a team environment, working on shared codebases and remote projects using Git and GitHub for version control.
• Develop and deploy machine learning models on remote servers.

Qualifications

• Strong programming skills in Python with proficiency in Pandas and NumPy.
• Solid background in machine learning, especially in classification and retrieval tasks, and hands‑on experience with large language models, RAG, and prompt engineering.
• Proven ability to collaborate in a team environment, particularly when working on shared codebases and remote projects.
• Proficiency in using Git and GitHub for version control.
• Strong data management and manipulation skills.
• Experience developing and deploying machine learning models on remote servers.

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong understanding of NLP with experience in audio/voice manipulation tasks, specifically TTS and STT.
• Familiarity with Hugging Face Transformers and Datasets libraries.
• Proficiency in using Hydra for configuration management and Weights & Biases for experiment tracking.

Benefits

• Strong commission‑led OTE, comprehensive benefits package, generous paid time off and pension matching.
• Private healthcare and wellbeing support, learning & development opportunities.
• 25 days of vacation.
• Up to 32 hours paid time off per year to volunteer with a charity of your choice.
• Training and personal development in soft skills and hard skills, access to our internal learning portal and internal career opportunities within Zebra departments.
• Employee referral bonus for bringing new talent to Zebra.
• Pension scheme with a matched contribution up to 7%.
• Private medical and dental covers.
• Cycle to work scheme.
• Employee Assistance Program.