VP of Research - Foundation Models (AI)

TL;DR

VP of Research - Foundation Models (AI): Developing and executing pre-training strategies for biologics foundation models and vertical LLMs for regulated industries with an accent on distributed training and scaling laws. Focus on translating frontier research into production-ready models and owning the full training stack from data pipelines to evaluation.

Location: On-site in Zürich or Lausanne, Switzerland

Company

hirify.global builds AI-native systems to reinvent business operations in regulated industries by combining strategy, frontier AI, and product expertise.

What you will do

• Own pre-training strategy and execution for biologics foundation models across various modalities.
• Lead the adaptation and continued pre-training of vertical LLMs for regulated sectors.
• Manage the full training stack, including data pipelines, distributed training, and failure recovery.
• Define research direction and standards for a small, elite founding team.
• Translate frontier AI research into practical, scalable models for real-world use.

Requirements

• World-class pre-training experience from top labs such as Meta/FAIR, OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic, or Mistral.
• Deep mastery of large-scale distributed training, parallelism strategies, and scaling laws.
• Proven track record of shipped models or high-impact publications.
• Expertise in biologics or scientific foundation models (protein, genomic, molecular, etc.).
• PhD in a relevant field and ability to remain hands-on with coding.
• Must be based on-site in Switzerland (Lausanne or Zurich).

Culture & Benefits

• Dedicated compute resources for real pre-training.
• Founding research seat with genuine technical authority and strategic influence.
• Direct collaboration with top-20 pharma companies.
• Freedom to publish research and contribute to open source.
• Competitive compensation package including equity.
• Flexible working culture emphasizing freedom and responsibility.