About Sakana AI
Sakana AI is a Tokyo-based AI research lab founded by former Google Brain researchers, pioneering nature-inspired approaches to artificial intelligence.
About the Role
As an Applied Research Engineer, you will bridge the gap between research breakthroughs and real-world applications. You'll take novel algorithms developed by the research team — including evolutionary model merging, swarm-based optimization, and nature-inspired training methods — and build practical systems that demonstrate their value.
Responsibilities
- Translate cutting-edge research papers and prototypes into production-quality implementations
- Design and run experiments to evaluate model performance across real-world use cases
- Build demo applications and benchmarks that showcase Sakana AI's unique capabilities
- Collaborate with researchers to identify promising directions for applied work
- Optimize model performance for inference speed, memory usage, and accuracy trade-offs
- Contribute to technical publications and open-source releases
Qualifications
- MS or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field (or equivalent industry experience)
- Strong programming skills in Python with deep PyTorch or JAX experience
- Demonstrated ability to reproduce and extend research results
- Experience with large language models, vision models, or multi-modal systems
- Strong experimental design and evaluation methodology skills
- English proficiency required; Japanese language skills are a plus