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About This Role
Overview:
WHAT YOU DO AT AMD CHANGES EVERYTHING
At AMD, our mission is to build great products that accelerate next\-generation computing experiences—from AI and data centers, to PCs, gaming and embedded systems. Grounded in a culture of innovation and collaboration, we believe real progress comes from bold ideas, human ingenuity and a shared passion to create something extraordinary. When you join AMD, you’ll discover the real differentiator is our culture. We push the limits of innovation to solve the world’s most important challenges—striving for execution excellence, while being direct, humble, collaborative, and inclusive of diverse perspectives. Join us as we shape the future of AI and beyond. Together, we advance your career.
Responsibilities:
THE ROLE:
We are hiring Forward Deployed AI Research Scientist to help bring advanced AI capabilities into high\-impact engineering and customer\-facing workflows. This role combines applied AI research, technical strategy, prototyping, and field\-facing collaboration. You will work closely with internal engineering teams and strategic external partners to identify valuable problems, shape them into tractable AI research and engineering efforts, and drive them toward measurable outcomes.
The role is designed to scale a technical\-business bridge across AMD: translating customer and partner needs into AI research directions, translating AI capabilities into engineering value, and helping teams align on what can be built, measured, and delivered.,THE PERSON:
You are a research\-minded technical leader who can operate in ambiguous, high\-stakes environments. You can speak credibly with AI researchers, software engineers, hardware engineers, executives, and partner teams. You are equally comfortable reading papers, shaping experiments, building prototypes, writing crisp technical narratives, and helping stakeholders understand what matters. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Work with internal and external stakeholders to identify high\-value AI opportunities in compute, systems, software, and hardware engineering workflows.
- Translate partner and customer needs into research questions, technical plans, evaluation criteria, and prototype paths.
- Prototype and evaluate modern AI methods for engineering tasks, including agentic workflows, tool use, code generation, debugging, optimization, retrieval, and learning from feedback.
- Partner with research and engineering teams to define metrics, evals, benchmarks, and acceptance criteria for AI\-assisted workflows.
- Build technical narratives, demos, and decision materials that help senior stakeholders understand tradeoffs, progress, risks, and strategic value.
- Support strategic deals and collaborations by serving as a credible technical bridge between business goals and AI engineering reality.
- Capture recurring customer and partner needs and turn them into reusable insights for product, research, platform, and engineering roadmaps.
- Mentor teams on practical AI methods and help raise the quality of AI experimentation, evaluation, and communication across the organization.
TECHNICAL FOCUS AREAS:* Applied AI research for engineering workflows where correctness, performance, latency, reliability, and explainability matter.
- Agentic systems that use tools, tests, profilers, simulators, validation systems, and structured feedback.
- Evaluation design for ambiguous or high\-value tasks, including objective graders, human\-in\-the\-loop review, and LLM\-as\-judge methods where appropriate.
- AI systems for code understanding, code generation, optimization, debugging, knowledge retrieval, and workflow automation.
- Technical\-business translation for strategic customers, partners, engineering leaders, and cross\-functional teams.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:* Strong background in AI, machine learning, systems, or applied research, with ability to turn ideas into prototypes and measurable experiments.
- Experience with modern generative AI methods, LLMs, agents, tool use, retrieval, post\-training, evaluation, or applied ML systems.
- Strong programming ability in Python and familiarity with ML frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow, or similar.
- Ability to work with technical stakeholders across software, hardware, infrastructure, research, product, and business teams.
- Excellent communication skills, including the ability to explain complex AI and systems topics clearly to both technical and executive audiences.
PREFERRED EXPERIENCE:* Experience in forward\-deployed engineering, customer engineering, applied research, technical partnerships, solutions architecture, or strategic technical programs.
- Experience with GPU systems, CPU performance, compilers, distributed training/inference, hardware/software co\-design, or performance engineering.
- Experience designing benchmarks, evals, experiment platforms, or metrics for AI systems.
- Publications, open\-source contributions, technical blogs, demos, or shipped AI systems are a plus.
- Familiarity with semiconductor, datacenter, AI infrastructure, or high\-performance computing environments is a strong plus.
ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS:
Bachelor's degree is required preferrably in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Machine Learning, or related field, or equivalent practical experience. Master's preferred; PhD is a plus, especially in AI, ML systems, computer systems, GPU computing, or hardware/software co\-design. \#LI\-BM1\#LI\-Hybrid
Qualifications:
*Benefits offered are described:* AMD benefits at a glance. *AMD does not accept unsolicited resumes from headhunters, recruitment agencies, or fee\-based recruitment services. AMD and its subsidiaries are equal opportunity, inclusive employers and will consider all applicants without regard to age, ancestry, color, marital status, medical condition, mental or physical disability, national origin, race, religion, political and/or third\-party affiliation, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We encourage applications from all qualified candidates and will accommodate applicants’ needs under the respective laws throughout all stages of the recruitment and selection process.* *AMD may use Artificial Intelligence to help screen, assess or select applicants for this position. AMD’s “Responsible AI Policy” is available* *here.* *This posting is for an existing vacancy.*
Role Details
About This Role
Research Scientists push the boundaries of what AI can do. They design experiments, develop novel architectures, publish papers, and translate research breakthroughs into production capabilities. This is where the fundamental advances happen, from attention mechanisms to diffusion models to reasoning chains.
The work is intellectually demanding and often ambiguous. You might spend months on an approach that doesn't pan out. The best research scientists combine deep mathematical intuition with engineering pragmatism. They know when to go deep on theory and when to run experiments. They read papers voraciously and can spot incremental contributions from genuine breakthroughs.
Across the 3,708 AI roles we're tracking, Research Scientist positions make up 3% of the market. At AMD, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Research Scientist roles are concentrated at major AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta FAIR) and well-funded AI startups. The competition is intense. PhD is effectively required for most positions, and publication track record matters. Compensation is among the highest in AI, reflecting both the scarcity of talent and the strategic importance of research breakthroughs.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week includes: reading and discussing recent papers with your team, designing and running experiments on multi-GPU clusters, analyzing results and iterating on hypotheses, writing up findings for internal review or publication, and collaborating with engineering teams to productionize promising results. The ratio of thinking to coding is higher than in engineering roles.
Research Scientist roles are concentrated at major AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta FAIR) and well-funded AI startups. The competition is intense. PhD is effectively required for most positions, and publication track record matters. Compensation is among the highest in AI, reflecting both the scarcity of talent and the strategic importance of research breakthroughs.
Skills Required
PhD strongly preferred for most roles. Deep expertise in a specific area (NLP, computer vision, reinforcement learning, multimodal) is expected. PyTorch is the standard. Publication track record matters. Strong mathematical foundations in linear algebra, probability, optimization, and information theory are assumed.
Beyond the fundamentals, companies value experience with large-scale distributed training, novel architecture design, and the ability to bridge theory and practice. Understanding of current frontier topics (reasoning, multimodal, long-context, alignment) is essential. Code quality matters more than many researchers expect. Labs want researchers who can implement their ideas cleanly.
Strong research postings specify the research area, mention the team you'd join, and describe the problems they're working on. They often list recent publications from the team. Vague 'AI research' postings without specifics usually mean the company wants to sound impressive but doesn't have a real research agenda.
Compensation Benchmarks
Research Scientist roles pay a median of $222,200 based on 197 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $200,000.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($300,000) and Research Engineer ($280,000). By seniority level: Entry: $120,000; Mid: $200,000; Senior: $230,000; Director: $272,150; VP: $250,000.
AMD AI Hiring
AMD has 19 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI Product Manager, AI/ML Engineer, Research Scientist. Positions span Austin, TX, US, Secaucus, NJ, US, San Jose, CA, US. Compensation range: $244K - $244K.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 14% (508 positions) offer remote work, while 3,180 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (1,045 roles, $220,000 median); San Francisco (810 roles, $277,088 median); Los Angeles (397 roles, $215,000 median).
Career Path
Common paths into Research Scientist roles include PhD Student, Research Engineer, Postdoc.
From here, career progression typically leads toward Research Lead, Distinguished Scientist, VP of Research.
The PhD is the entry point for most paths. Choose your advisor and research area carefully since they'll define your first industry position. Publish consistently, contribute to open-source projects in your area, and build relationships at conferences. Industry research offers better compensation and compute resources than academia, but the pressure to show product impact is real.
What to Expect in Interviews
Research interviews are multi-stage: a research talk (present your best paper), technical deep-dives on your methodology, and often a 'research proposal' exercise where you design an experiment to test a hypothesis. Coding rounds test implementation ability alongside theoretical knowledge. Be prepared to implement a paper from scratch and discuss the design choices the authors made. Strong candidates can critique papers constructively and identify gaps in experimental methodology.
When evaluating opportunities: Strong research postings specify the research area, mention the team you'd join, and describe the problems they're working on. They often list recent publications from the team. Vague 'AI research' postings without specifics usually mean the company wants to sound impressive but doesn't have a real research agenda.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 3,708 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 102 entry-level, 1,705 mid-level, 1,469 senior, and 432 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 14% of the market (508 positions). The remaining 3,180 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($300,000 median, 21 roles); Research Engineer ($280,000 median, 147 roles); AI Architect ($254,798 median, 67 roles).
Research Scientist roles are concentrated at major AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta FAIR) and well-funded AI startups. The competition is intense. PhD is effectively required for most positions, and publication track record matters. Compensation is among the highest in AI, reflecting both the scarcity of talent and the strategic importance of research breakthroughs.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 3,708 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,605), Data Scientist (310), AI Software Engineer (259). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (102) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,705) and senior (1,469) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 432 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 14% of all AI roles (508 positions), with 3,180 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $217,500. Top-quartile roles start at $272,100, and the 90th percentile reaches $325,000. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $300,000 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $140,000. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,890 postings), Aws (1,103 postings), Azure (877 postings), Rag (855 postings), Gcp (631 postings), Prompt Engineering (560 postings), Pytorch (545 postings), Claude (498 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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