Director of Research
Orcrist Technologies GmbH
full-time
Posted on:
Location Type: Remote
Location: Germany
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Job Level
About the role
- Define and own the company research strategy aligned with product priorities and multi-team technical leverage.
- Build and lead a world-class research team of AI researchers, data scientists, and research engineers.
- Lead first-principles research in domains such as ASR, translation, information extraction, multimodal reasoning, visual pattern recognition, graph/temporal reasoning, and statistical analysis.
- Build the external R&D pipeline: identify opportunities, shape bids, build consortia, author work packages, and act as scientific/technical lead in awarded projects.
- Establish research operating discipline: reproducibility standards, benchmark suites, experiment tracking, model/data documentation, and portfolio reviews.
- Drive transfer into delivery teams by producing adoption-ready research packages, not just prototypes or papers.
- Represent Orcrist externally across customers, partners, universities, RTOs, industry associations, and public funding bodies.
- Shape IP and dissemination strategy for research outputs together with leadership and legal stakeholders.
- Partner closely with Innovation, Insights, Foundation, Platform, and customer-facing teams.
- Coach senior researchers and raise the bar for technical writing, scientific judgment, and cross-functional influence.
Requirements
- 8+ years in applied AI/ML research, data science, or equivalent deep-technical R&D roles.
- 3+ years leading research programmes, senior researchers, or cross-functional R&D initiatives.
- Deep expertise in machine learning / AI research with strong mathematical and statistical foundations.
- Expert Python; strong command of PyTorch and CUDA-backed model development.
- Experience with distributed training / research infrastructure (e.g. Ray, Horovod, multi-GPU workflows).
- Strong grounding in evaluation design, error analysis, benchmark construction, and reproducible experimentation.
- Comfort moving between research and applied systems concerns, including inference constraints and deployment trade-offs.
- Experience across one or more of: NLP, speech/audio, translation, CV, multimodal systems, knowledge graphs, temporal reasoning, or applied statistics on structured data.
- Track record of original research that produced practical impact: shipped capabilities, patents, influential prototypes, or externally recognised outputs.
- Proven experience winning or materially shaping collaborative R&D proposals, grants, tenders, or consortia.
- Strong technical writing: research memos, proposals, work packages, and external-facing technical narratives.
- Player-coach mentality: high standards, low ego, hands-on when needed.
- Eligible to work in Germany.
- German language (C1+) and comfort working in German/EU public-sector environments.
Benefits
- Build the research function behind a sovereign European intelligence platform.
- Unique mix of original research, real-world adoption, and public-interest impact.
- Opportunity to shape both technical differentiation and external funding strategy.
- Remote-first in Germany with occasional team events in Berlin.
- Home office budget and great equipment.
- 30 days vacation.
Applicant Tracking System Keywords
Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.
Hard Skills & Tools
machine learningAI researchstatistical analysisPythonPyTorchCUDAdistributed trainingNLPcomputer visionapplied statistics
Soft Skills
leadershipcoachingtechnical writingcross-functional influencescientific judgmentcommunicationcollaborationproblem-solvinginnovationadaptability