VP of Research, Machine Learning

Job Title: VP of Research, Machine Learning Position Description: Protingent Staffing has an exciting direct hire VP of Research, Machine Learning with our client that is fully remote. Job Description: You will own the research and intelligence direction of this system. Your role is to define how AI reasons, evaluates, and improves in a product used with high frequency. Job Responsibilities: Set and evolve the research direction for our client’s core intelligence, including context representation, memory, reasoning, planning, and orchestration. Decide when to design new model architectures versus adapting or leveraging frontier open-source or commercial models. Define evaluation frameworks that measure real-world usefulness, robustness, safety, and long-term behavior – not benchmark vanity. Own alignment, safety, and guardrail strategy as first-class product concerns Guide exploration of frontier techniques such as: retrieval-augmented training mixture-of-experts distillation multi-agent orchestration multimodal systems Shape early product intelligence direction in close partnership with product and application engineering. Set the technical bar for research rigor, judgment, and taste across the organization. Job Qualifications: Deep experience building or evolving real machine learning systems used in production. Strong technical judgment around model behavior, failure modes, and long-horizon trade-offs. A builder’s mindset: you care about systems that work in the real world, not just ideas. Comfortable making irreversible or high-impact decisions with incomplete information. Obsession with evaluation, correctness, and how systems behave over time. High ownership mentality — you operate as a founder, not a manager. Must Have: Python PyTorch / JAX GPU-based training and inference system Job Details: Job Type: Direct Hire Pay Range: Market Rate Location: Fully Remote. About Protingent: Protingent is an Award-Winning provider of top-tier Engineering and IT talent, trusted by companies at the forefront of innovation — from Software and Aerospace to AI, Clean Tech, Medical Devices, and Connected Technologies. We’re passionate about making a positive impact by connecting exceptional talent with meaningful opportunities and helping our clients build the future.