World Model Lead

Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Vision

• Define and evolve the overall world model architecture, drawing on PAN (Perception-Action-Network) principles:
  1. Multimodal data ingestion
  2. Mixed continuous/discrete representations
  3. Hierarchical generative modeling with enhanced LLM and diffusion-based predictors
  4. Generative loss grounded in real observations
  5. Simulation for RL-based agent training
• Establish and drive performance, safety, and evaluation benchmarks for continuous improvement.

Project & Team Management

• Oversee planning, resourcing, and timeline for world model projects.
• Manage research engineers and scientists (e.g., data curators, RL experts, simulator developers) to achieve unified progress.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with agent, reasoning, and deployment teams to integrate world model outputs into downstream applications (robotics, multi-turn dialogue, autonomous systems).
• Liaise with external collaborators (academia & industry) to incorporate the latest advances and tooling.

Governance & Communication

• Report on project status, risks, and key insights to senior leadership and stakeholders.
• Champion best practices in reproducibility, documentation, and knowledge sharing.

Requirements

• Ph.D. or M.S. with 8+ years in AI research or engineering focused on world modeling, simulation, or generative modeling
• Proven experience building large-scale simulators or predictive models for complex environments
• Deep expertise in transformer-based LLMs, diffusion models, and hierarchical latent representations
• Hands-on experience with reinforcement learning frameworks (policy learning, planning with latent dynamics)
• Strong leadership in project management, cross-site coordination, and team mentorship

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading multi-location technical teams in fast-paced R&D settings
• Published contributions to world model architectures or simulation benchmarks
• Track record of taking research prototypes into production systems

Benefits

• Health Insurance
• Paid Leave
• Visa
• Relocation Allowance

About the Company

The Institute of Foundation Models is a dedicated research lab focused on building, understanding, using, and risk-managing foundation models. The institute accelerates research, nurtures AI talent, and drives transformative contributions to a knowledge-driven economy. As part of the team, you’ll work alongside world-class researchers, data scientists, and engineers, tackling impactful challenges in AI and developing solutions that can reshape industries. Working at IFM means being at the core of foundation model innovation within the UAE and beyond.