Principal AI Scientist

AI That Moves the World. Careers That Move You Forward.
At Cerence AI, you’ll help transform advanced AI into trusted, real-world solutions that make complex technology – think vehicles, robots, smart manufacturing, and emerging intelligent devices – more natural, reliable, and useful. Building on decades of innovation and global deployment in automotive, we are extending our expertise into new products, markets, and intelligent systems. 

As part of our global team, you’ll work alongside leading innovators, researchers, engineers, and business leaders to solve meaningful challenges and turn breakthrough ideas into technology people use every day. You’ll have the opportunity to make a visible impact, help shape Cerence AI’s next chapter, and move your own career forward.

Your Impact

• Architect, design, and implement state-of-the-art Generative AI models (auto-regressive, diffusion, Discrete Diffusion, Hybrid SSM etc ) and advance the SOTA in very small LLMs.
• Leverage your expertise to effectively train, fine-tune, and optimize models that impact LLMs (Multimodal & Multilingual), shaping them for optimal accuracy, naturalness, and performance.
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams comprising agentic AI scientists, software engineers, and domain experts. By understanding their requirements, you will collaboratively develop customized solutions that leverage the prowess of LLMs/MLLMs.
• Innovate and enhance existing applications by integrating the power of LLMs/MLLMs, thereby ensuring optimal performance and speed even on resource-constrained platforms.
• Stay fully abreast of the latest advancements, trends, and research in the realms of Generative AI, Conversational AI, and language modeling, actively incorporating new techniques, technologies, and best practices to continually enhance the overall performance of our systems.

What You Bring

• Extensive experience and demonstrated mastery in developing LLM/MLLMs.
• Well versed with commercial deployments, post-deployment support, model-profiling and optimization needed for production environments. It would be preferable to be experienced in deploying models in different languages.
• Advanced degree (Ph.D. preferred) in computer science, electrical engineering, or a related field.
• Exceptional programming skills in Python along with a strong ability to implement complex machine learning algorithms.
• Proven track-record in developing conversational AI systems, successfully working with diverse elements such as acoustic models, language models, and pronunciation models.
• Possess strong analytical thinking, problem-solving capabilities, and a collaborative mindset, ensuring you can thrive within our fast-paced and innovative environment.

What we offer

At Cerence AI, we offer a comprehensive and competitive benefits package designed to support your health, financial security, personal wellbeing, and life outside of work.  Benefits are effective from the date of hire.

Our benefits include:

• The expected salary range for this position is $123,500 USD - $197,600 USD / $174,605.54 CDN - $279,401.46 CDN The actual salary will be determined based on experience and other job-related factors.
• Annual bonus opportunity
• Flexible Time Off
• Choice‑based medical coverage plus Dental and Vision plans
• Health Savings Accounts (HSA), Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) and 401(k) USA retirement plan with an employer match / CDN RRSP (Registered Retirement Savings Plan)
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Paid parental leave and adoption assistance
• Disability and life insurance
• We also offer an Employee Assistance Program, a wellbeing platform, volunteer hours, a broad employee discount marketplace, tuition reimbursement and a global rewards and recognition program.

All compensation and benefits are subject to the terms and conditions of the underlying plans or programs, as applicable, and may be amended, terminated, or replaced from time to time.

It would be nice to have extensive experience porting these models on very small footprint devices.

Cerence AI (NASDAQ: CRNC) helps people and intelligent systems work together naturally and reliably. Proven at global scale in automotive, Cerence provides the trusted interaction and action layer connecting people, machines, and intelligent systems. Its AI platform enables natural interaction and dependable action across complex real-world environments where reliability, safety, security, and performance are critical. Working with customers and partners worldwide, Cerence transforms advanced AI into trusted solutions that bridge the gap between AI potential and real-world performance.

For more information, visit www.cerence.ai.

Cerence is firmly committed to Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and to compliance with all federal, state and local laws that prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of age, race, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sex, sex stereotyping, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, religion, physical or mental disability, medical condition, marital status, citizenship status, sexual orientation, protected military or veteran status, genetic information and other protected classifications. Cerence Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

All prospective and current Employees need to remain vigilant when it comes to executing security policies in the workplace. This includes:

- Following workplace security protocols and training programs to familiarize with the ways to maintain a safe workplace.
- Following security procedures to report any suspicious activity.
- Having respect for corporate security procedures to allow those procedures to be effective.
- Adhering to company's compliance and regulations.
- Encouraging to follow a zero tolerance for workplace violence.

- Basic knowledge of information security and data privacy requirements (e.g., how to protect data & how to be handling this data).

- Demonstrative knowledge of information security through internal training programs.