Senior Video RAG Research Scientist

Your Impact

We are seeking a skilled and innovative Senior AI Research Scientist to join a new team focusing on video and multimodal search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). As a research scientist at Axon you will play a crucial role in developing AI solutions that transform both the enterprise and public safety domains and support our company’s mission: accelerate justice, protect truth, and save lives. You will advance the state-of-the-art in machine learning and multimodal technology and apply your research findings to create new responsible AI capabilities for Axon products. You will collaborate with product managers, engineers and cross-functional teams to train models and develop cutting-edge algorithms and solutions that enable intelligent perception and understanding of visual and multimodal data.

At Axon, we Aim Far. We think big with a long-term view because we want to reinvent the world to be a safer, better place. If you’re excited about this role and our mission to Protect Life but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification listed here, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

What You’ll Do

Reports to: Director of AI Research
Location: This role is based out of our Seattle, WA office and follows a hybrid schedule. We rely on in-person collaboration and ask that team members work onsite Tuesdays through Fridays, with the flexibility to work remotely on Mondays, unless there is an approved workplace accommodation. We believe that connection fuels innovation, and our in-office culture is designed to foster meaningful teamwork, mentorship, and shared success.

• Collaborate with other scientists, engineers and product managers to build proof-of-concepts to shape the Axon of tomorrow.
• Lead end-to-end research efforts in AI-assisted universal search of large multimodal data with an emphasis on video understanding.
• Advance related computer vision, machine learning and gen-AI techniques for cloud and devices from multimodal data sources, including scene understanding, action recognition and anomaly detection.
• Design and implement responsible, privacy-preserving, efficient and scalable models for inference and analysis of visual data.
• Develop performance and quality metrics for computer vision and machine learning (CVML) models and systems, and validate their effectiveness in real-world settings.
• Stay up-to-date with the latest research and advances in CVML and translate relevant findings into shipping Axon products.
• Contribute to academic publications, technical documentation, and patent disclosures to share insights and findings with the broader community.
• Coach and mentor junior scientists.

What You Bring

• PhD and 3+ years of experience in Computer Science or a related field with a focus on multimodal machine learning, video understanding, information retrieval, large language models or related technical fields.
• Proven track record of applied research and/or production impact in multimodal learning, video-language modeling, retrieval systems, foundation models, or RAG architectures.
• Experience owning and driving the ML development lifecycle from problem definition and data strategy through model development, evaluation, deployment, and iteration in production environments.
• Experience contributing to large-scale ML and multimodal RAG systems including embeddings, indexing and vector search at scale, distributed training or inference workflows, evaluation and ranking optimization, and grounding LLMs with external knowledge.
• Strong understanding of video analysis and temporal modeling as well as computer vision fundamentals and trade-offs.
• Excellent problem-solving skills, analytical thinking, and the ability to work independently as well as collaboratively in a team environment.
• Proficiency in Python and frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow or Keras.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to effectively present complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Benefits that Benefit You

• Competitive salary and 401k with employer match
• Discretionary paid time off
• Paid parental leave for all
• Medical, Dental, Vision plans
• Fitness Programs
• Emotional & Mental Wellness support
• Learning & Development programs
• And yes, we have snacks in our offices

The Pay: Axon is a total compensation company, meaning compensation is made up of base pay, bonus, and stock awards. The starting base pay for this role is between USD 159,750 in the lowest geographic market and USD 234,300 in the highest geographic market. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, such as: level, function, training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs, geographic market, and often a combination of all these factors. Our benefits offer an array of options to help support you physically, financially and emotionally through the big milestones and in your everyday life. To see more details on our benefits offerings please visit www.axon.com/careers/benefits.

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