Staff Research Scientist- Interactive Avatars
Level inferred from job title
Job description
Staff Research Scientist in Synthesia's R&D department, working on generative AI for avatar-centric, interactive video diffusion models within the Interactive Avatars team. The role sets research direction for dyadic interaction modeling and turns breakthrough research into shipped product capabilities.
At a glance
- Work mode
- Hybrid · Europe
What you'll do
- Set the research direction and roadmap for dyadic interaction modeling, balancing long-term bets with near-term product impact
- Advance the state of the art in the perceptual layer of interactive agents, including understanding user audio and video and generating contextually appropriate reactions
- Post-train multimodal models to generate rich, natural dyadic interactions from user audio and video inputs
- Adapt diffusion models to new conditioning signals, such as conversational state, turn-taking, and listener cues
- Build robust evaluation frameworks and test suites for continuous tracking of interaction quality
- Partner with the data team to define data needs and shape high-quality datasets
- Lead and mentor a small group of researchers, and drive technical decisions across research, data, and engineering
What we're looking for
- Deep ML expertise and extensive hands-on experience with diffusion models, ideally for video or avatar generation
- Experience leading a small team of researchers and mentoring junior members
- A track record of taking research from idea to production
- Proficiency in PyTorch and modern ML tooling for large-scale training
- Clear communication of hypotheses, experiments, and results, and the ability to influence direction across teams
Nice to have
- Experience with real-time or streaming generation, including autoregressive video diffusion
- Distillation or other techniques for low-latency inference
- Audio-driven facial, gesture, or full-body motion modeling
- Conversational modeling, such as turn-taking, backchanneling, or listener-response generation
Your team
Interactive Avatars team
Part of the R&D department, alongside 40+ researchers and engineers; builds models that hold natural, real-time conversations, understanding what a user says and how they say it and responding with appropriate turn-taking, backchannels, gaze, and facial and body reactions.
Benefits
- Competitive compensation
- Hybrid work setting with an office in London, Zurich, Munich, or remote in Europe
- 25 days of annual leave + public holidays
- Great company culture with the option to join regular planning and socials at our hubs
- Other benefits depending on your location
Apply
Direct apply at Synthesia
Opens the job posting at Synthesia
About Synthesia
The world's leading AI video platform for business
Synthesia is the world's leading AI video platform for business, used by over 90% of the Fortune 100. Founded in 2017, the company is headquartered in London, with offices and teams across Europe and the US. As AI continues to shape the way we live and work, Synthesia develops products to enhance visual communication and enterprise skill development.
Mission
AI safety, ethics, and security are fundamental to our mission. People first. Always.
Key facts
- 2017
- London
- AI video platform
- Used by over 90% of the Fortune 100
- Raised $200 million in a recent Series E funding round
- Total funding exceeds $530 million
- Serving 50,000+ customers and 50% of the Fortune 500
- AI technology built in-house by a team of world-class AI researchers and engineers
Partners & customers
What they value
- People first. Always.
- Passionate about building, not talking, planning or politicising
- Hire the smartest, kindest and most unrelenting people and let them do their best work without distractions