Aleph Alpha Research’s mission is to deliver category-defining AI innovation that enables open, accessible, and trustworthy deployment of GenAI in industrial applications. Our organization develops foundational models and next-generation methods that make it easy and affordable for Aleph Alpha’s customers to increase productivity in development, engineering, logistics, and manufacturing processes.
As a Director of AI R&D at Aleph Alpha (f/m/d), you manage, co‑own and help drive the engineering and science excellence bar across a major section of our large‑scale foundation model development lifecycle — such as pre‑training, post‑training, or a dedicated capability‑oriented R&D domain (e.g. explainability, controllability, or efficiency).
You will contribute to defining and executing the research and engineering scope for your area - empowering highly autonomous teams to deliver world‑class models and methods with scientific rigor, operational excellence, and organizational clarity.
Team Culture
At Aleph Alpha, we foster a culture built on ownership, autonomy, and empowerment. Teams and individual contributors are trusted to take responsibility for their work and drive meaningful impact. We maintain a flat organizational structure with efficient, supportive management that enables quick decision‑making, open communication, and a strong sense of shared purpose.
Your responsibilities
Manage one or more AI R&D teams focusing on a model lifecycle stage (e.g. pretraining, post training, or an exploratory research domain).
Serve as a line manager responsible for the growth, motivation, and performance of researchers and engineers across various IC levels.
Co‑own the technical and scientific direction for your area — balancing mid-term exploration with near-term delivery.
Uphold and propagate Aleph Alpha’s cultural principles of autonomy, ownership, and peer accountability.
Partner with other Directors and Principal ICs to ensure architectural coherence, infrastructure readiness, and effective collaboration across R&D domains.
Contribute technically to select work-streams (e.g. scaling and efficiency studies, reinforcement learning, evaluation pipelines, or capability alignment).
Drive organizational efficiency - ensuring clear goals, minimal blockers, and consistent communication between teams and leadership.
Represent your teams’ work within and outside Aleph Alpha, sharing insights and progress with internal stakeholders and the broader research community.
Your profile
Strong background in managing AI research or ML engineering teams engaged in model development, training, or optimization at scale.
Proven technical expertise in one or more of the following: LLM pre-training (data and compute optimization), post‑training (fine‑tuning, reinforcement learning, evaluation), emerging GenAI research areas (e.g. safety, compute efficiency), or other areas of machine learning.
Ability to nurture highly autonomous contributors while maintaining strategic coherence and scientific excellence.
Experience translating research goals into clear, achievable execution plans.
Excellent interpersonal skills and a collaborative mindset suited to a peer‑driven, low‑hierarchy environment.
Skilled in balancing hands‑on technical engagement with effective people and project leadership.
Willingness to regularly work from our Heidelberg or Berlin hubs to collaborate closely with teams.
Preferred qualifications
Strong leadership mindset and skill that aligns well with the teal organization setup at Aleph Alpha
PhD or comparable research experience in machine learning, computer science, or related technical field.
Record of contributions to state-of-the-art model training methods.
Demonstrated success in building or scaling high-performing teams in a research‑driven environment.
Commitment to fostering team diversity and developing future technical leaders.
What we offer
Become part of an AI revolution!
30 days of paid vacation
Access to a variety of fitness & wellness offerings via Wellhub
Mental health support through nilo.health
Substantially subsidized company pension plan for your future security
Subsidized Germany-wide transportation ticket
Budget for additional technical equipment
Flexible working hours for better work-life balance and hybrid working model
Virtual Stock Option Plan
JobRad® Bike Lease
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What We Do
We are an AI research and application company that researches, develops and operationalises large-scale AI models for language, image data and strategy, thereby contributing to securing Europe's digital sovereignty
