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Language Research Jobs (NOW HIRING)

Lead, collaborate, and execute on research that pushes forward the state of the art in large language model research * Contribute to Conference-quality publications and open-sourcing efforts * Help ...

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Language Research information

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How much do language research jobs pay per hour?

As of Jul 3, 2026, the average hourly pay for language research in the United States is $37.37, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $24.04 and $46.88 per hour, depending on experience, location, and employer.

How do language researchers typically collaborate with other team members in multidisciplinary projects?

Language researchers often work closely with professionals from fields such as computational linguistics, software engineering, and cognitive science. Collaboration usually involves sharing linguistic insights, contributing to project design, and interpreting language data for product or research development. Effective communication and the ability to translate complex linguistic concepts for non-specialists are key to success. Regular meetings, collaborative documentation, and cross-functional workshops are common practices that help ensure smooth collaboration and project progress.

What is language research?

Language research is the scientific study of language, including its structure, use, acquisition, and evolution. Researchers in this field analyze how people communicate, how languages differ and change, and how language relates to the brain and society. This work can involve linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and education, and often contributes to advancements in technology, language learning, and understanding human cognition.

What is the difference between Language Research vs Language Analyst?

AspectLanguage ResearchLanguage Analyst
Required CredentialsDegree in linguistics, language studies, or related fieldDegree in linguistics, language studies, or related field; often additional certification
Work EnvironmentAcademic, research institutions, or corporate R&DGovernment agencies, intelligence, security, or corporate security teams
Employer & Industry UsageUniversities, research centers, tech companiesGovernment agencies, defense, intelligence, security firms
Common Search & ComparisonResearch roles, academic positionsOperational, analysis, intelligence roles

Language Research focuses on studying languages, linguistics, and theoretical aspects, often within academic or R&D settings. Language Analysts apply linguistic skills to analyze language data for security, intelligence, or operational purposes. While both roles require similar educational backgrounds, their work environments and objectives differ significantly.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive in Language Research, and why are they important?

To thrive in Language Research, a strong background in linguistics, data analysis, and research methodologies, often supported by an advanced degree in linguistics or a related field, is essential. Familiarity with linguistic analysis software, corpus management tools, and programming languages such as Python or R is typically required. Attention to detail, critical thinking, and effective written communication distinguish top performers in this field. These skills enable researchers to produce rigorous, impactful findings and advance understanding in language-related domains.
More about Language Research jobs
What cities are hiring for Language Research jobs? Cities with the most Language Research job openings:
What states have the most Language Research jobs? States with the most job openings for Language Research jobs include:
Infographic showing various Language Research job openings in the United States as of June 2026, with employment types broken down into 1% As Needed, 80% Full Time, 15% Part Time, 1% Temporary, and 3% Contract. Highlights an 88% Physical, 3% Hybrid, and 9% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $77,729 per year, or $37.4 per hour.

Research Scientist - Vision Language Model

Institute of Foundation Models

Sunnyvale, CA โ€ข On-site

$150K - $450K/yr

Full-time

Posted 5 days ago


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.
$150,000 - $450,000 a year
Salary Range
The posted salary range represents the company's good faith estimate of the compensation for this position upon hire. The actual compensation offered may vary within this range depending on individual qualifications, including but not limited to relevant skills, experience, education, certifications, geographic location, and specific business needs.
Professional Experience
Minimum
  • Experience working with large language models and/or vision-language models, including pre-training, fine-tuning, evaluation, or inference.
  • Strong Python and PyTorch development skills for large-scale machine learning research.
  • Experience with distributed training systems and large-scale model optimization.
  • Familiarity with multimodal datasets and data processing pipelines involving images, text, and video.
  • Understanding of modern deep learning architectures, including Transformers, attention mechanisms, and multimodal fusion techniques.
  • Experience with ML infrastructure, including model evaluation, debugging, optimization, and large-scale experimentation.
  • Problem-solving and research skills with the ability to independently drive research/engineering projects.
  • Effective communication and collaboration skills for working across research and engineering teams.

Preferred Skills
  • Hands-on experience training or fine-tuning large Vision Language Models or multimodal foundation models at scale.
  • Experience with distributed learning frameworks and infrastructure such as PyTorch Distributed, Megatron, Triton, or CUDA.
  • Research experience in multimodal reasoning, agentic systems, tool use, OCR, grounding, document understanding, or multimodal retrieval.
  • Experience with synthetic data generation, multimodal data curation, or automated evaluation frameworks for VLMs.
  • Familiarity with efficient training and inference techniques such as FlashAttention, quantization, tensor parallelism, pipeline parallelism, or memory optimization.
  • Experience contributing to open-source ML software and large-scale research codebases.
  • Strong publication record in leading AI conferences such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ACL, EMNLP, or related venues.
  • Experience collaborating across research, infrastructure, and product-oriented teams to deliver state-of-the-art multimodal systems.