Machine Learning Research Engineer

Our mission is to make the world programmable. Sight is one of the key ways we understand the world, and soon this will be true for the software we use, too.

We’re building the tools, community, and resources needed to make the world programmable with artificial intelligence. Roboflow simplifies building and using computer vision models. Today, over 1M+ developers, including those from half the Fortune 100, use Roboflow’s machine learning open source and hosted tools. That includes counting cells to accelerate cancer research, improving construction site safety, digitizing floor plans, preserving coral reef populations, guiding drone flight, and much more.

Roboflow is supported by great customers and investors, having raised over 63 million from Y Combinator, Google Ventures, Craft Ventures, Sam Altman, Lachy Groom, amongst other leading software investors.

Roboflowers love building great things with passionate teammates. We value ownership, accountability, and a bias toward action—whether it's a big initiative or a small fix. You’re naturally curious, hands-on with new tech (maybe even played with ChatGPT or AI products early on), and prefer to show your work over talking about it. Many of us have founder mindsets and thrive in Roboflow’s high-autonomy environment—some even started as side hustlers in school.

At Roboflow, we’re redefining what it means to do machine learning research—building models that don’t just set benchmarks but directly solve real-world problems. As a Machine Learning Research Engineer, you'll join a small, high-performing team focused exclusively on computer vision, in contrast to the industry’s current obsession with language models. You'll explore and implement new ideas in PyTorch, contribute to open source projects, and experiment with the latest advances in segmentation, detection, classification, and few-shot understanding. Your work will make state-of-the-art models accessible to a massive global developer base, with direct visibility and impact. You won’t be publishing papers for the sake of academic credit; your success is measured by what you build, how it performs, and how many people it helps.

In this role, you will:

• Research and prototype novel computer vision models and training techniques

• Lead end-to-end ML research projects: identify problem areas, survey academic/industry approaches, experiment, and implement

• Help ML Engineers implement and deliver your work

• Build and iterate on vision models in PyTorch with a focus on segmentation, detection, and few-shot understanding

• Reproduce and extend results from top academic papers using PyTorch

• Build open-source and production-quality implementations for public and internal use

• Work closely with product and engineering to ensure research is reproducible and user-facing while owning the research direction and methodology

• Drive innovation in key areas like segmentation, vision-language models, and general-purpose CV models

• Push the boundaries of what’s possible in vision through rapid experimentation and creative modeling approaches

• Maintain high standards for reproducibility, experimentation, and code quality in all research outputs

• Develop models that outperform existing state-of-the-art tools used by thousands of real users in production environments

• Contribute to open source and help shape the future of Roboflow’s research direction alongside a scrappy, inventive team

• Experience: 3–4+ years of hands-on ML research experience; PhD preferred but not required if equivalent industry experience

• Publications: Author on peer-reviewed papers; able to demonstrate track record of meaningful research contributions

• Technical Depth: Expert-level knowledge in PyTorch, modern vision architectures (YOLO, SAM, VLMs), and training pipelines

• Vision Expertise: Deep knowledge of object detection, instance segmentation, keypoint detection, SAM, and VLMs

• Innovative Thinker: Comes up with new ideas and pushes the boundary of what’s possible in vision

• Collaborative Researcher: Balances academic rigor with practical usability; enjoys collaborating with engineers

• Independent & Impact-Oriented: You thrive in ambiguous environments (like fast-paced startups), seek out hard problems, and care about delivering real-world results

To determine your salary, we use a number of market and data-driven salary sources. We review all salaries every six months to ensure we stay in line with the market.

💰 The target compensation for this role is $200,000-$275,000 base. Each full time Roboflower will receive an equity package- so we are all invested in the future of computer vision.

📈 In addition to our cash compensation, we offer generous perks and benefits. Below are some of the highlights:

• $4000/yr Travel Stipend to travel anywhere anytime to work alongside other Roboflowers

• $350/mo Productivity stipend to spend on things that make your work environment more productive, like high-speed internet at home or a co-working space

• $350/mo AI Tools Budget to leverage latest LLM technologies to maximize your efficiency

• Cover up to 100% of your health insurance costs for you and your partner or family

• Remote first/flexible schedule allowing you to work collaboratively with other team members and asynchronously

• Unlimited PTO- with an annual 2 week minimum, we encourage you to take time off for yourself

• 12 weeks parental leave

We want a diverse, global team with a broad range of experience and perspectives. If this job sounds great, but you’re not sure if you qualify, we encourage you to reach out to us at [email protected] or subscribe to our career newsletter by emailing "Subscribe" to [email protected]. We carefully consider every application and will either move forward with you, find another team that might be a better fit, keep in touch for future opportunities, or thank you for your time.

Equal Employment Opportunity

At Roboflow, we believe great ideas come from everywhere—and everyone. We’re proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. We consider all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristics.

Our recruiter, Sarah is a real live human and she’s looking forward to reading your application 👋