Staff Applied AI Scientist

Join to apply for the Staff Applied AI Scientist - Ottawa, ON role at Trend Micro . Trend Micro, a global cybersecurity leader, harnesses AI to protect organizations and individuals across clouds, networks, devices, and endpoints. The Trend Vision One™ enterprise cybersecurity platform accelerates proactive security outcomes by predicting and preventing threats across the entire digital estate and environments like AWS, Google, Microsoft, and NVIDIA. Location: This is a hybrid role with a minimum in‑office requirement of 3 days per week in the Ottawa, ON office located at 40 Hines Rd, Ottawa, ON K2K 2M5. Position Summary We are seeking talented professionals to join our team in developing and optimizing advanced machine learning and AI systems. As a Staff Applied AI Scientist , you will contribute across the full machine learning lifecycle, driving innovation in AI for cybersecurity and advancing techniques to secure AI applications. You will combine strong theoretical foundations with hands‑on engineering to design, build, and operate production‑grade AI systems at scale. Responsibilities Own the full lifecycle of language models and other deep learning models, from design and training through evaluation, deployment, and continuous improvement for enterprise‑grade applications. Design efficient, scalable AI systems, applying strong mathematical foundations to problem formulation and model architecture selection. Drive key technical decisions on how models are developed and adapted, selecting appropriate training, tuning, and optimization approaches for each use case. Prototype novel approaches using expert‑level programming skills and evaluate their performance in production environments. Build and operate AI Ops pipelines, including evaluation metrics, monitoring, drift detection, and automated lifecycle management. Stay current with the state of the art in language, vision, and multimodal models, and apply relevant advances to real‑world cybersecurity problems. Core Skills & Experience Hands‑on, end‑to‑end experience bringing LLM/SLM research into production, including fine‑tuning, reinforcement learning, inference optimization, evaluation pipelines, and AI Ops integration. Demonstrated experience taking AI models from research through production, including responsibility for deployment, monitoring, and ongoing iteration in live systems, as well as building and deploying containerized AI microservices. Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to explain complex concepts clearly. Strong problem‑solving skills, creativity, and curiosity. A passion for staying ahead in a fast‑moving AI landscape. Expertise In One Or More Of The Following Areas Balancing data, model, and infrastructure trade‑offs to meet real business SLAs and cost constraints. Fine‑tuning LLMs using modern toolchains (e.g., LLaMA‑Factory, NVIDIA NeMo) and PEFT methods (LoRA and newer PEFT variants). Reinforcement learning for LLMs and agents (e.g., VeRL/verl, SkyRL, Ray RLlib) for RLHF, reasoning fine‑tuning, and agentic training. Production inference with frameworks such as vLLM, NVIDIA NIM, Triton, CUDA/NCCL, and PyTorch/XLA, including quantization, distillation, kernel‑level optimizations, and end‑to‑end profiling and benchmarking. Model optimization for throughput and latency using TensorRT, quantization techniques, and custom kernels. AI Ops and observability tooling, such as Weights & Biases, MLflow, and Ray Serve. What We Offer You We provide benefit options for you and your family: Group benefits program with health and dental coverage Telehealth Virtual Health Services Life Insurance Short & Long Term Disability Pre‑partum, maternity, parental and medical leave Critical Illness Insurance Mental Health Wellness Program Wellness Incentive Program Retirement Savings Programs with company match Paid Time Off 14 Annual Holidays Tuition Assistance Employee Resource Groups We offer competitive compensation with bonus opportunity tied to company performance, along with room to enhance your skills through ongoing learning and broad technological opportunities. Achieving work‑life balance is a priority, complemented by team activities, fostering an environment rooted in equity, inclusion, and collaboration, reflected in our culture and work. Trend Micro Canada has been recognized as one of the National Capital Region's Top Employers. No sponsorship will be provided for work permit applications or renewals for this position now or in the future. At Trend Micro, we embrace change, empower people, and encourage innovation in a connected world. Our diversity and multicultural workforce are key contributing factors to our success across the globe. Trend Micro welcomes and encourages applications from people with disabilities. Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process. Be passionate. Be innovative. Be a trender. #J-18808-Ljbffr