Staff Research Scientist- Interactive Avatars

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Staff Research Scientist – Interactive Avatars based in Germany. This is a senior research role at the forefront of generative AI, focused on building the next generation of interactive, avatar-based video agents. You’ll work within a multidisciplinary R&D organization combining research, engineering, and data expertise. Your focus will be on creating models that can understand audio and visual signals and respond with natural, human-like conversational behavior. You’ll shape research direction while balancing ambitious long-term opportunities with near-term product impact. The role combines deep technical research, hands-on model development, evaluation, and research leadership. You’ll also mentor researchers and influence technical decisions across multiple teams, helping transform breakthrough ideas into production-ready capabilities.

Define the research direction and roadmap for dyadic interaction modeling, balancing long-term research opportunities with immediate product priorities. Advance the perceptual capabilities of interactive AI agents, including understanding user audio and video and generating contextually appropriate responses. Develop and post-train multimodal models capable of producing rich, natural, and responsive dyadic interactions from audio and video inputs. Adapt and extend diffusion models to incorporate conversational conditioning signals such as dialogue state, turn-taking, listener cues, and contextual reactions. Research and develop models capable of generating natural conversational behaviors, including gaze, facial expressions, body reactions, and backchannel responses. Design robust evaluation frameworks, benchmarks, and automated test suites to continuously measure interaction quality. Collaborate closely with data specialists to define data requirements and shape high-quality datasets for model development and training. Lead technical decisions spanning research, data, and engineering, ensuring strong alignment between research goals and product requirements. Lead and mentor a small team of researchers, supporting their technical development and helping establish a high-performing research culture. Drive research projects from initial hypothesis and experimentation through validation, productionization, and product impact. Communicate research hypotheses, methodologies, experimental results, and technical recommendations clearly to both research and cross-functional audiences. Requirements: Deep expertise in machine learning with extensive hands-on experience working with diffusion models, ideally applied to video generation, avatar generation, or related multimodal applications. Strong research track record demonstrated through publications at leading conferences such as CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, or SIGGRAPH, or equivalent evidence of significant research impact. Expertise in areas such as video diffusion, world models, dyadic interaction modeling, multimodal generation, or related fields. Proven experience leading a small team of researchers and mentoring junior research talent. Demonstrated ability to take research concepts from initial idea through experimentation and into production systems. Strong proficiency in PyTorch and modern machine learning tooling for large-scale model training. Strong understanding of multimodal learning, generative modeling, and large-scale ML experimentation. Excellent analytical and problem-solving abilities, with a rigorous approach to designing experiments and evaluating results. Clear communication skills and the ability to explain complex technical concepts, influence research direction, and collaborate effectively across teams. Strong ownership and ability to operate in a fast-moving research environment where experimentation and iteration are encouraged. Nice to have: Experience with real-time or streaming generation, including autoregressive video diffusion. Expertise in model distillation or other techniques designed to achieve low-latency inference. Experience with audio-driven facial animation, gesture generation, or full-body motion modeling. Experience in conversational modeling, including turn-taking, backchanneling, listener-response generation, or related interaction behaviors. Experience developing AI systems designed for real-time human-machine interaction. Benefits: Competitive compensation package. Fully remote working option within Europe. Hybrid working opportunities for employees based near London, Munich, or Zurich offices. 25 days of annual leave plus public holidays. Opportunity to work alongside a large team of AI researchers and engineers at the forefront of generative AI. Direct opportunity to influence the research roadmap and development of emerging interactive AI technologies. Strong culture focused on building, experimentation, autonomy, and high-impact execution. Regular opportunities to connect with colleagues through office hubs, planning sessions, and social events. Collaborative environment with access to multidisciplinary expertise across research, engineering, and data. Opportunity to mentor researchers and contribute to the development of advanced AI research capabilities. Work on real-world AI products used by leading organizations across multiple industries. Commitment to responsible AI, with strong emphasis on safety, ethics, security, and human-centered technology. Additional location-specific benefits depending on where you are based.