Research Scientist, Low Level Vision, Level 4

Snap Inc is a technology company. We believe the camera presents the greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate. Snap contributes to human progress by empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together. The Company’s three core products are Snapchat, a visual messaging app that enhances your relationships with friends, family, and the world; Lens Studio, an augmented reality platform that powers AR across Snapchat and other services; and its AR glasses, Spectacles.

Snap Research serves as an innovation engine for the company. Our projects range from solutions to hard technical problems that significantly enhance Snap’s existing products, to riskier explorations that can lead to fundamental paradigm shifts in the way people communicate and express themselves. The team consists of scientists and engineers who experiment with and invent new technology that has a lasting impact on Snap’s products. 

We are looking for a Research Scientist to join our Computational Imaging Research Team! The Computational Imaging team in NYC focuses on enhancing user experiences with our photo and short form video products, and enabling our creators to make Lenses more easily in Lens Studio. Specifically, our core focus in 2025 is on improving image and video quality (quality assessment, video super resolution, compression, image editing), and animations (animation generation, 3D avatar, video generation for animations). Our research areas include computer vision, computational imaging/photography, 3d motion/video generation, efficient VLMs, and more.

What you'll do:

• Propose and develop innovative technologies to improve image and video quality, such as (1) image/video super-resolution/restoration, (2) image/video quality assessment, or (3) advanced video codec

• Enhance the quality of AIGC-generated videos using low-level vision techniques, such as super-resolution and video frame interpolation

• Contribute to image editing, efficient vision-language model development, etc.

• Partner with product teams to deliver your technologies to hundreds of millions of Snapchatters

• Work on projects including on-device neural network (NN) compression or non-NN methods speedup (optional)

• Mentor research interns, publish your research at top academic conferences or contribute to video compression standards
   

Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities:

• Ability to identify and define impactful and challenging research and R&D projects in both academic and product contexts

• Ability to generate innovative research and engineering ideas through out-of-the-box thinking

• Strong prototyping, implementation, and programming skills (in Python and/or C++), such as developing or accelerating NN methods (including dataset preparation, architecture/loss design, and NN compression), or non-NN methods.

• Ability to stay at the forefront of low-level vision or computational photography in academia

• Ability to remain at the cutting edge of advancements in the image/video quality industry

• Fast learner with the ability to quickly adapt to new research topics, such as image editing and efficient vision-language models

• Strong technical foundation in deep learning and computer vision

• Proven ability to lead and mentor interns, PhD students, and junior researchers, as well as collaborate effectively with product teams

• Strong and clear communication skills

Minimum Qualifications:

• PhD in a related technical field such as computer science, statistics, mathematics, machine learning or equivalent years of experience 

• Strong theoretical foundations of generative AI and practical experience training, tuning, and modifying generative models

Preferred Qualifications:

• Hands-on experience with on-device NN compression, such as quantization, pruning, knowledge distillation, NAS, and/or other emerging techniques

• Successful record of publication in top-tier academic conferences and journals (e.g. CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICLR, NeurIPS, SIGGRAPH, TPAMI) or contributions to video compression standards

• Strong technical foundation in signal processing, statistics, machine learning, and computer vision

• Hands-on experience with state-of-the-art non-NN methods in image processing and their speedup on mobile devices, such as Metal for iOS, OpenGL or Vulkan for Android

"Default Together" Policy at Snap: At Snap Inc. we believe that being together in person helps us build our culture faster, reinforce our values, and serve our community, customers and partners better through dynamic collaboration. To reflect this, we practice a “default together” approach and expect our team members to work in an office 4+ days per week.

At Snap, we believe that having a team of diverse backgrounds and voices working together will enable us to create innovative products that improve the way people live and communicate. Snap is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and committed to providing employment opportunities regardless of race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other protected classification, in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws. EOE, including disability/vets. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please don’t be shy and contact us at [email protected].

Our Benefits: Snap Inc. is its own community, so we’ve got your back! We do our best to make sure you and your loved ones have everything you need to be happy and healthy, on your own terms. Our benefits are built around your needs and include paid parental leave, comprehensive medical coverage, emotional and mental health support programs, and compensation packages that let you share in Snap’s long-term success!