AI Research Scientist: Multimodal Foundation Models - Architecture, Pre-Training & Distillation
Apple
Listing collected from Apple's career site. NextChapter is independent of Apple.
Sunnyvale, CA · Posted November 10, 2026
Just laid off? Start here: a plan for the first weeks
More in California job market · Technology & Software · Data & Analytics jobs
More roles at Apple
- Applied AI Scientist - Multimodal Intelligence · Sunnyvale, CA
- Forward Deployed Software Engineer - Platforms Engineering, Enterprise Technology Services · Austin, TX
- Machine Learning Engineer, Sales Engineering · Austin, TX
- Worldwide Reseller Operations Program Manager · Cupertino, CA
- Sr. Engineering Security Program Manager - Apple Service Engineering (ASE) - iCloud / China · Cupertino, CA
- Sr. Site Reliability Engineer, Enterprise Technology Services · Austin, TX
Similar jobs
- Head of AI Product · Baker Tilly · CA
- Sr Manager, AI Engineering · Workday · Pleasanton, CA
- AI Partnerships & GTM Manager · CrowdStrike Holdings · Sunnyvale, CA
- Sales Reporting Systems Analyst - Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach Resort and Club · Hilton Worldwide Holdings · Dana Point, CA
- Manager 3, Mid Market Intelligence (AI-native ERP) · Intuit · Mountain View, CA
- Senior AI Scientist - Fintech Risk AI · Intuit · Mountain View, CA
Where Sunnyvale, CA ranks
Where Sunnyvale, CA placed in our monthly rankings, month by month. Each month stays online at its own address.
November 2026
- #1Best cities for consumer and retail pay after cost of living$194k · of 11
- #3Best cities for data and analytics pay after cost of living$213k · of 28
- #4Best cities for pay after cost of living in California$192k · of 32
- #4Best all-round cities for AI careers95 / 100 · of 100
- #4Best all-round cities for AI careers in the West Coast88 / 100 · of 39
- #5Best cities for pay after cost of living in the West Coast$192k · of 39
Rankings about data & analytics jobs
- Best cities for data and analytics jobs #1 New York (1,713 openings)
- Best cities for data and analytics pay after cost of living #1 Foster ($232k)
- Most requested AI skills in data and analytics jobs #1 Machine learning engineering (17.1%)
- AI tools named most often in data and analytics jobs #1 Databricks (7.6%)
- Employers with the most data and analytics jobs #1 Amazon (711 roles)
Data & Analytics jobs · Top Data & Analytics employers · All rankings
How AI is used in this kind of work
Among data scientists, AI is already used for a large share of the tasks. Measured exposure for data scientists: 46% (high).
Share of this job’s tasks that AI is already used for at work, from real usage. It is not a forecast of job loss, and a low number means no use seen yet. Source: Anthropic Economic Index.
Apple has filed 4 layoff notices in the last twelve months, covering 225 workers, most recently August 2026. These are public filings with state labor departments, and an open role can sit alongside them. See the filings
About the job
The Multimodal Intelligence Team is building the next generation of foundation models for Apple experiences. We are looking for a research scientist to advance the architectures, pre-training methods, and distillation techniques that make highly capable multimodal models practical across the Apple ecosystem.
Our research spans the full foundation-model lifecycle: model architecture, pre-training objectives, data mixtures, optimization, scaling, distillation, and evaluation. A defining challenge of our work is to develop models that combine broad intelligence with the memory, latency, energy, and privacy requirements of on-device deployment.
You will have the opportunity to shape new research directions, conduct ambitious experiments at scale, and translate successful ideas into foundation-model technologies that can reach Apple products. Where appropriate, this work may also lead to publications and the open sourcing of selected models, research artifacts, evaluations, or tools.