🇯🇵 Software Engineering Manager, Multimodal Assistive Agents (Astra) - Japan Full time

You will play a key role in building and nurturing a team that enhances assistive agent experiences through advanced AI, leveraging multimodal (vision, audio, text) large language models. This role requires a blend of technical expertise, including prompt engineering, post-training techniques for multimodal LLMs, a strong understanding of the multimodal LLM and assistive agent landscape, and proven leadership skills to guide a high-performing research and engineering team. If you are driven to shape the future of multimodal assistive agents with AI and want to be a part of a collaborative and impactful team at Google DeepMind in Tokyo, we encourage you to apply.

- Lead and Mentor a High-Performing Team: Build, mentor, and guide a diverse team of engineers and researchers, fostering a collaborative and supportive environment where everyone can thrive. You will actively invest in their professional development through regular feedback, coaching, and opportunities for growth.
- Drive Technical Strategy and Execution: Define the technical roadmap for developing multimodal assistive agents for products, working closely with technical leads and product managers, and drive execution from concept to deployment. You will provide guidance based on your domain knowledge and experience, ensuring alignment with overall deployment strategy.
- Hands-on Technical Contribution: Contribute technically to the development process, particularly in areas of prompt engineering and post-training for multimodal LLMs, including data pipelines and evaluation methodologies.
- Collaborate Across Teams and Globally: Partner closely with researchers, product managers, and engineering teams in Japan, the UK, and the US, to seamlessly integrate advanced AI capabilities into compelling agent experience. This role offers a unique opportunity to collaborate with global experts and contribute to cutting-edge AI development.

- Master's or Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 5+ years of experience in software engineering with a strong focus on machine learning and deep learning.
- 2+ years of experience directly managing and leading high-performing engineering teams of 5-10 contributors.
- Proven track record of successfully building and deploying AI-powered solutions in an industry setting.
- Experience working with researchers and engineers in research domains, ideally including multimodal AI.
- Demonstrated ability to work effectively in a highly collaborative and interdisciplinary environment.
- Experience leading teams that collaborate across time zones and cultures, particularly between Japan, the UK, and the US.

In addition, the following would be an advantage:

- Hands-on experience with prompt engineering and post-training techniques for large language models, including data pipeline and evaluation methodologies.
- Experience with ML frameworks such as JAX, PyTorch, or TensorFlow.
- Experience training and deploying large-scale models (>10 billion parameters).
- Deep understanding of AI/ML algorithms and models (e.g., Transformers).
- Experience developing AI-powered applications or solutions.
- Familiarity with industry such as education, health, and gaming sectors.
- Proven coaching and mentoring skills, with a passion for developing talent.
- Project management certifications or significant experience leading complex projects.
- Contributions to the open-source community or publications in the field of AI.

TBD