AI Research Team Leader – 12+ Month Research Visit in China

TCL is a global leader in consumer electronics with 120,000 employees across 78 countries and ranked the #2 TV brand worldwide. Our portfolio includes display panels, mobile phones, wearable devices, home appliances, and renewable energy solutions.

We are now launching a major AI research initiative focused on Reasoning Multimodal Large Language Models. We are assembling an elite team to develop foundational AI technologies that reason across text, images, and audio—with the goal of turning Large Model research breakthroughs into real-world applications.

Our initial focus is on vertical domains critical to TCL’s business, such as semiconductor display technologies, where data is inherently multimodal—combining visual and textual information. To unlock deep insights and support complex decision-making in these domains, our models must be capable of sophisticated multimodal reasoning.

Learn more in our technical report: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.14430v1

Preference will be given to candidates open to temporary assignments at our global headquarters in Shenzhen, China, to foster close collaboration with business units and established AI teams on-site.

Responsibilities:

• Define and lead the research agenda in multimodal (combining vision, speech and text), reasoning-capable LLMs and related AI areas

• Mentor and grow a team of researchers and applied scientists

• Architect and oversee activities such as continuous pre-training, fine-tuning, synthetic data generation, multimodal Retrieval-Augmented Generation, Chain-of-Thoughts, agentic workflows and more

• Drive projects from fundamental research to applied research/productization

• Stay current with developments in AI/ML, multimodal learning, and LLM research

• Collaborate with international teams and strategic research partners, including Alibaba Qwen LLM team

We offer:

• Strategic leadership role in a high-impact, greenfield project driven by the latest advances in AI

• A fast-growing project offering abundant opportunities for personal and professional growth

• Attractive salary adequate to skills and experience

• An opportunity to experience life and work in Shenzhen, China—one of the world's most dynamic tech hubs and a global leader in LLM research investment

• Work with the latest technologies

• Opportunity to publish research papers

• Friendly atmosphere

Requirements

Must have:

• At least 5 years of experience in AI/ML research

• Experience as a technical or team leader in AI

• Strong foundation in deep learning and familiarity with large model architectures such as Transformers, CLIP, SAM

• Hands-on experience with deep learning frameworks (preferably PyTorch)

• MSc or PhD degree in Computer Science, Mathematics or a related technical field (or equivalent R&D experience)

• Proficient in English communication, good team spirit and a strong sense of ownership and responsibility

Nice to have:

• Willingness to work temporarily at TCL HQ in Shenzhen, China’s Silicon Valley

• Experience growing and mentoring AI teams

• PhD in a relevant technical field

• Publication track record in major conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, CVPR, ACL)

• Achievements in AI, math, or algorithmic contests