Staff AI Research Engineer (Aerospace)

TL;DR

Staff AI Research Engineer (Aerospace): Developing and implementing cutting-edge machine learning and deep learning algorithms for all-electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft with an accent on model architecture, training pipelines, and production integration. Focus on solving complex AI challenges, validating academic research, and building scalable frameworks to support autonomous flight systems.

Location: Must be based in San Jose, California, United States

Salary: $190,000 - $240,000

Company

hirify.global is an aerospace company building all-electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft to advance sustainable air mobility.

What you will do

• Design, implement, and evaluate novel machine learning and deep learning algorithms.
• Manage the full AI model lifecycle from data preparation and architecture design to deployment.
• Collaborate with research engineers to prototype and validate complex solutions from academic literature.
• Conduct experiments to benchmark new techniques and evaluate model behavior.
• Develop tools and frameworks to support scalable and reproducible research.
• Transition research prototypes into production-ready systems.

Requirements

• M.S. or PhD in Computer Science or Computer Engineering with a strong emphasis on AI/ML.
• Must be authorized to work in the US (no visa sponsorship available).
• Strong proficiency with ML frameworks such as Pytorch or Tensorflow.
• Deep understanding of Transformer architectures, attention mechanisms, and multi-modal foundation models.
• Ability to debug and determine requirements for AI models regarding data, training, and evaluation.
• Up-to-date knowledge of current research literature and ML methodologies.

Nice to have

• Experience with Reinforcement Learning, self-supervised training, and imitation learning.
• Experience developing VLA (Vision Language Action) models for robotic manipulation.
• Experience developing production AI models.
• Publications at top AI/ML conferences.

Culture & Benefits

• Pay-for-performance culture focused on rewarding strategic impact.
• Commitment to an equitable and inclusive workplace.
• Opportunity to work on high-impact, complex aerospace engineering challenges.
• Supportive environment that celebrates diverse perspectives and team members.