Applied AI Researcher

Role Purpose

Bridge advanced AI research and practical enterprise use cases by validating models, methods, and prototypes that can become production-grade solutions. The role focuses on measurable business value, rigorous experimentation, model behavior, and safe translation of research into banking-relevant applications.

Primary Ownership

• Applied research agenda for LLMs, NLP, RAG, evaluation, multimodal AI, and agentic workflows.
• Prototypes, experiments, benchmark design, and model selection recommendations.
• Research-to-production handoff with AI engineering and platform teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Conduct applied research in LLMs, GenAI, NLP, information retrieval, multimodal AI, synthetic data, and agentic AI.
• Design experiments to evaluate model performance, robustness, safety, scalability, interpretability, and enterprise usefulness.
• Prototype AI solutions for use cases such as document intelligence, financial analysis, compliance support, knowledge retrieval, and operational automation.
• Develop evaluation methodologies using golden datasets, adversarial testing, offline benchmarks, human review, and business outcome metrics.
• Assess prompt optimization, RAG, fine-tuning, instruction tuning, synthetic data generation, distillation, and model adaptation techniques.
• Collaborate with engineers to convert prototypes into production-ready systems with clear requirements, limitations, and acceptance criteria.
• Track emerging AI research and translate relevant advances into practical recommendations for the enterprise.
• Produce internal research papers, technical notes, implementation guides, and thought-leadership materials.

Must-Have Candidate Profile

• Advanced degree preferred, usually MS or PhD in AI, ML, computer science, statistics, computational linguistics, mathematics, or related field.
• Strong foundation in machine learning, deep learning, NLP, transformers, information retrieval, and generative AI.
• Hands-on experience with LLMs, embeddings, RAG, model evaluation, and applied GenAI experimentation.
• Python skills with PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face, scikit-learn, or equivalent research frameworks.
• Ability to design rigorous experiments and communicate findings to technical and business stakeholders.

Preferred Experience

• Research or applied science experience in banking, finance, compliance, risk, legal, operations, or enterprise knowledge systems.
• Publications, patents, internal research contributions, or open-source AI contributions.
• Familiarity with Responsible AI, model validation, privacy constraints, and regulated deployment environments.

About NTT DATA Services

NTT DATA Services is a recognized leader in IT and business services, including cloud, data and applications, headquartered in Texas. As part of NTT DATA, a $30 billion trusted global innovator with a combined global reach of over 80 countries, we help clients transform through business and technology consulting, industry and digital solutions, applications development and management, managed edge-to-cloud infrastructure services, BPO, systems integration and global data centers. We are committed to our clients’ long-term success. Visit nttdata.com or LinkedIn to learn more.

NTT DATA Services is an equal opportunity employer and considers all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, citizenship, national origin, ancestry, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, physical or mental disability, veteran or marital status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment for all employees. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please inform your recruiter so that we may connect you with the appropriate team.

Where required by law, NTT DATA provides a reasonable range of compensation for specific roles. The starting hourly range for this role is (HOURLY RATE MIN TO MAX). Actual compensation will depend on several factors, including the candidate’s relevant experience, technical skills, and other qualifications. This position is eligible for company benefits that will depend on the nature of the role offered. Company benefits may include medical, dental, and vision insurance, flexible spending or health savings account, life, and AD&D insurance, short-and long-term disability coverage, paid time off, employee assistance, parti…