Research Engineer – Multimodal AI & Interaction

Job summary

Research and develop next-generation multimodal AI capabilities for consumer devices, focusing on perception, reasoning, and interaction. The role involves prototyping research ideas and optimizing models for real-world constraints like latency and power.

Job details

Huawei Canada has an immediate permanent opening for a Researcher. About the team: The Huawei Human-Machine Interaction Lab unites global researchers, engineers, and designers to redefine human technology relationships through user centered, hands on research. We focus on agentic AI and multimodal interaction (voice, touch, vision, gesture) across smartphones, wearables, and emerging devices—advancing agentic workflows, multi-agent orchestration, and intuitive human-AI interfaces. By tightly integrating sensing, algorithms, and systems, our prototype driven work ships directly to products, enabling seamless task delegation and human AI collaboration at scale. About the job: Research, design, and build next-generation multimodal AI capabilities for intelligent consumer devices, spanning speech/audio, vision, language, touch, gesture, motion, and contextual sensing Identify high-impact research problems and own projects from early exploration through model development, evaluation, and product-oriented validation Design, train, fine-tune, and evaluate deep learning and foundation models for multimodal perception, reasoning, interaction, and generation Develop new approaches for reasoning across modalities to enable more natural, adaptive human-machine interaction Rapidly prototype research ideas, reproduce state-of-the-art methods, and evolve promising concepts into robust demonstrations Build datasets and evaluation methodologies, run rigorous experiments, and establish metrics reflecting both model performance and real interaction quality Optimize models for real-world constraints (latency, memory, power, privacy, robustness, on-device vs. cloud) and collaborate across research, engineering, and product teams Contribute reproducible code, documentation, and IP through publications, patents, or open-source projects when appropriate The total target annual compensation for this position ranges from $106,000 - $156,000 depending on education, experience, and demonstrated expertise. Job requirements About the ideal candidate: Master's or PhD in CS, EE/CE, AI, ML, Statistics, Math, HCI, or related field (exceptional Bachelor's candidates considered) Strong foundation in ML/deep learning with hands-on experience in PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, or similar Technical depth in multimodal learning, speech/audio, computer vision, NLP, generative AI, or foundation models Experience with LLMs/VLMs, agentic AI, multi-agent systems, or context-aware intelligent systems is a strong asset Track record turning research into working systems: prototypes, open-source, patents, publications, or shipped products End-to-end ML development experience: data prep, training, evaluation, debugging, optimization, deployment Understanding of practical AI trade-offs (quality, latency, compute, memory, robustness) and on-device/resource-constrained deployment 3+ years relevant research or industry experience (including graduate research), with strong Python (Typescript / Kotlin, C++/Java a plus) and collaboration skills across teams Additional Information: Huawei Canada is committed to a fair, inclusive, and accessible recruitment process. If you require accommodation during any stage of the hiring process, please let us know and we will work with you to meet your needs. All applications for this position are reviewed directly by our hiring team, we do not use artificial intelligence tools to screen or select candidates.

What you’ll do

Research and develop next-generation multimodal AI capabilities for consumer devices, focusing on perception, reasoning, and interaction. The role involves prototyping research ideas and optimizing models for real-world constraints like latency and power.

Requirements

Requires a Master's or PhD in CS, AI, or a related field with 3+ years of research or industry experience. Candidates must have strong proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks, with a track record of turning research into working systems.

Listed skills

• Python · Preferred

Other relevant skills

Identified from the job description. Confirm important requirements above.

• Multimodal AI
• Deep Learning
• PyTorch
• TensorFlow
• JAX
• Large Language Models
• Vision Language Models
• Agentic AI
• Natural Language Processing
• Computer Vision
• Python
• Model Optimization
• Prototyping
• Multi-agent Systems
• Contextual Sensing
• Human-Computer Interaction

Job areas

• Science & Research
• Technology
• Engineering
• Software
• Data & Analytics