AIML - Lead Researcher, Foundation Models
Apple
Listing collected from Apple's career site. NextChapter is independent of Apple.
Seattle, WA · Posted November 3, 2026
Just laid off? Start here: a plan for the first weeks
More in Washington job market · Technology & Software · Research 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
- Research Scientist, Robotics · Allen Institute · Seattle, WA
- Research Scientist, Climate Modeling · Allen Institute · Seattle, WA
- Research Scientist, Neural Rendering, Google Beam · Google · Seattle, WA
- Senior Scientist / Research Scientist, Molecular Biology · GenScript USA · Seattle, WA
- Sr. Field Clinical Research Specialist · Medtronic MiniMed · Minneapolis, MN
- Research Scientist, Physical AI - Foundation Models - PhD New College Grad 2026 · Nvidia · Santa Clara, CA
Where Seattle, WA ranks
Where Seattle, WA placed in our monthly rankings, month by month. Each month stays online at its own address.
November 2026
- #1Cities with the most jobs that do not need a four-year degree in the Pacific Northwest316 jobs · of 8
- #1Best cities for software and engineering jobs in the Pacific Northwest1,776 openings · of 14
- #2Best cities for energy and utilities pay after cost of living$180k · of 18
- #2Best cities for entry-level jobs that want AI skills in the Pacific Northwest17% · of 12
- #2Best cities for AI-skill jobs in the Pacific Northwest26% · of 17
- #2Best cities for software and engineering jobs in the West Coast1,776 openings · of 60
How AI is used in this kind of work
AI use among medical scientists, except epidemiologists is little observed so far. Measured exposure for medical scientists, except epidemiologists: 4% (little observed).
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
We build frontier foundation models that power intelligent experiences at Apple. Our team works across the full training lifecycle: including pre-training foundation models, and developing mid-training approaches that bridge general capability and task-specific performance. What makes our work distinct is that we're engineering models specifically for Apple silicon and optimized for experiences that are private, personal, and deeply integrated into the OS. We're solving frontier problems in reward modeling to resist reward hacking, handling sparse and delayed rewards in agentic settings, and aligning models reliably across the spectrum from open-ended creative tasks to precise, action-taking workflows. If you're drawn to hard problems where the research and the product are inseparable, this is the team.