Research Scientist at Canvs AI

Canvs AI is on a mission to enable empathy for the world’s leading brands by putting the power of understanding consumers’ feelings in the hands of every business. Fortune 500 companies like CVS, Disney, Church & Dwight, ABInbev and Netflix use the Canvs AI Platform daily to analyze unstructured feedback from both consumers and employees. Over the last year alone, Canvs has analyzed over 850 million pieces of open-ended text from surveys, social media and online comments on behalf of its brands, helping them achieve 20X faster insights while deepening their understanding of customers, markets and employees.

We're currently hiring a Research Scientist to join our Data Science & AI team. Reporting to the Director of Data Science & AI, you'll help develop next-generation AI systems that transform how organizations understand customer emotions and loyalty.

You will be responsible for designing, implementing, and evaluating LLM and transformer-based text classification models and developing reliable AI agents as part of our AsaCore initiative.

What you’ll do:

• Lead the transformation from keyword-based to transformer-based emotion classification systems that process millions of texts daily.
• Design and implement a variety of LLM agents that provide accurate, trustworthy insights. Examples include: RAG-based LLMs, fine-tuned open source models, SQL lookup agents, visualization agents, statistical agents, and more.
• Develop evaluation frameworks to detect model issues before they reach customers.
• Create benchmarking systems and validation datasets for various text-classification analysis models as part of our AsaCore initiative.
• Research and implement novel approaches to emotion detection that can handle nuanced customer feedback.
• Collaborate with offshore engineering teams to deploy models to production.
• Present findings to product and go-to-market teams to inform product roadmap decisions.
• Stay current with the latest advancements in NLP, transformer models, and LLM applications.

Who you are:

• MS or PhD in quantitative field (computer science, economics, ecology, math, physics, psychology, quantitative social science, etc.) with 3+ years of industry experience
• Strong expertise in transformer models and text classification systems
• Experience with large language models and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
• Proven track record implementing and evaluating NLP models in production environments
• Strong software engineering skills with Python and modern LLM/ML frameworks
• Experience reducing hallucinations in LLMs through techniques like RLHF, policy models, constitutional AI, or other guardrail implementations
• Experience with model monitoring, validation metrics, and quality assurance for AI systems
• Skilled at working with unbalanced datasets and handling taxonomy mapping challenges
• Self-directed and able to prioritize effectively in a fast-paced environment
• Passionate about using AI to understand human emotions and drive customer insights
• Excellent communication skills and ability to explain complex technical concepts
• Experience working with remote or distributed engineering teams
• Ability to perform all the above according to applicable security and privacy best practices while staying up to date with ever-evolving standards in the industry

Benefits we offer:

• Salary Range: Commensurate with experience and title
• Tremendous opportunity for career growth, and performance bonuses.
• Strong culture and commitment to values.
• Flexibility via a fully distributed company (Work From Anywhere!).
• Generous health benefits.
• Unlimited paid vacation.
• Summer Fridays.
• Monthly (at a minimum) virtual team-building events.

The Canvs Commitment

Canvs is committed to making the world a more empathetic place, and fills its ranks with people who want to do great work, care about making a difference, and regularly exemplify the company's shared values of:

• Openness, honesty, and transparency;
• Intellectual curiosity;
• High integrity and honor; and
• Empathy and compassion.

Canvs is also committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. Applicants from populations underrepresented in tech are strongly encouraged to apply. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, familial status, sexual orientation, national origin, ability, age, or veteran status.