Research Scientist / Research Engineer at Inception – San Mateo, California

Description Inception creates the world’s fastest, most efficient AI models. Our Mercury model is the world’s fastest reasoning LLM and first commercially available diffusion LLM, delivering 5x greater speed and efficiency than today’s LLMs, with best-in-class quality.
We are the AI researchers and engineers behind such breakthrough AI technologies as diffusion models, flash attention, and DPO.
We are looking for Research Scientists / Engineers with deep expertise in training and optimizing large language models. In this role, you will work on advancing our diffusion-based LLM architecture, developing novel training techniques, and pushing the boundaries of what's possible with parallel token generation.
Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and optimize LLM architectures and models.
• Implement innovative approaches for training, fine-tuning, and scaling generative AI models.
• Work on data preprocessing pipelines, model evaluation, and alignment to enterprise use cases.
• Design and implement novel model architectures for diffusion-based language models
• Develop and optimize training objectives and loss functions for LLMs
• Research and implement techniques for controlled text generation and constraint satisfaction
• Develop methods for multi-modal integration within the diffusion framework
• Work on improving model efficiency, reducing training time, and optimizing inference

Qualifications

• BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• At least 2 years of experience working on ML projects in PyTorch (or equivalent DL framework), preferably in a research lab or engineering role.
• Excellent familiarity with transformers and fundamental LLM concepts (e.g., autoregressive pretraining, instruction tuning, in-context learning, and KV caching).
• Familiarity with training and inference in diffusion models.
• Experience with training deep learning models at scale using distributed computing environments.

Preferred Skills

• Extensive experience training transformer-based language models from scratch
• Knowledge of advanced training techniques (mixed precision, gradient accumulation, etc.)
• Experience with multi-modal learning and cross-modal architectures
• Background in optimization theory and neural network architecture design
• Experience with LLMs serving frameworks like vLLM, SGLang, or TensorRT.

Why Join Inception

• Work with World-Class Talent: Collaborate with the inventors of diffusion models and leading AI researchers
• Shape Foundational Technology: Your decisions will influence how the next generation of AI products are built and used
• Immediate Impact: Join at the ground floor where your contributions directly shape product direction and company trajectory

Perks & Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity in a rapidly growing startup.
• Flexible vacation and paid time off (PTO).
• Access to the latest GPU hardware and cloud resources
• Health, dental, and vision insurance.
• A collaborative and inclusive culture

About UsInception creates the world’s fastest, most efficient AI models. Today’s autoregressive LLMs generate tokens sequentially, which makes them painfully slow and expensive. Inception’s diffusion-based LLMs (dLLMs) generate answers in parallel. They are 5x faster and more efficient, while delivering best-in-class quality.
Inception was co-founded by Stanford professor Stefano Ermon, who co-invented such breakthrough AI technologies as diffusion models, flash attention, and DPO, UCLA professor Aditya Grover, who co-invented node2vec, decision transformers, and d1 reasoning, and Cornell professor and Afresh co-founder Volodymyr Kuleshov, who co-invented MDLM and Block Diffusion.
We pioneered the application of diffusion to language, launching the world’s first commercially available dLLM, Mercury, in early 2025. We are currently deploying our large-scale diffusion LLMs at Fortune 500 companies. Diffusion is the technology behind today’s image and video AI, and we’re making it the standard for LLMs as well.
Our team includes engineers from Google DeepMind, Meta AI, Microsoft AI, and OpenAI. Based in Palo Alto, CA, we are backed by A-list venture capitalists, including Menlo Ventures, Mayfield, M12 (Microsoft’s venture fund), Snowflake Ventures, Databricks, and Innovation Endeavors, and by tech luminaries such as Andrew Ng, Andrej Karpathy, and Eric Schmidt.
If you are talented, innovative, and ambitious, come help us invent the future of AI.
We are an equal opportunity employer and encourage candidates of all backgrounds to apply.