Overview
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 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 technical field such as computer science/electrical engineering, or equivalent years of experience
- Hands-on experience with state-of-the-art neural network techniques such as CNNs, Transformers, GANs, diffusion models, VAEs, and/or other emerging techniques
- Industry or academic experience in defining and solving research problems in areas such as low-level vision or computational photography, including image/video enhancement and assessment, video compression, image editing, or efficient vision-language modeling
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
Benefits
Snap Inc. is its own community, so we’ve got your back! 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.
EEO & Accommodation
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
Other
Compensation details and pay zones are described by location. The base salary ranges listed are Zone A: $173,000-$259,000; Zone B: $164,000-$246,000; Zone C: $147,000-$220,000. This position is eligible for equity in the form of RSUs. This job description includes references to official Snap channels and privacy policies as applicable.
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