Lead Applied Scientist (NLP, Search, IR)

Lead Applied Scientist | Search, NLP & RAG Kadence is partnered with a globally recognised software company in the US. We're looking for a Lead Applied Scientist to push the boundaries of search and language AI. This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who lives and breathes information retrieval, NLP, and retrieval-augmented generation, someone who can architect end-to-end search and RAG system. What You'll Do Design and own search, IR, and RAG architectures that power AI-driven products at scale Apply context engineering, retrieval strategies, and model evaluation to build systems that actually perform in production Advise leadership on long-term search and AI strategy Partner closely with Product, UX, and Engineering to turn customer problems into shipped search/NLP solutions Stay at the cutting edge of IR, NLP, and RAG, through publications, patents, or product wins Mentor scientists and engineers, raising the bar on search and retrieval expertise across the team Represent the team at top-tier conferences (SIGIR, ACL, NeurIPS, ICLR, KDD, and more) What You Bring PhD (or Master's + equivalent experience) in a relevant field 7+ years building search, IR, RAG, or NLP systems that ship, not just research Deep expertise in information retrieval and retrieval-augmented generation, with a strong grasp of modern NLP techniques A velocity-first mindset: you'd rather build a working search/RAG solution in a workshop than perfect a slide deck Strong production coding chops and software delivery discipline A track record of translating messy, complex problems into search and NLP products that work Experience leading through others in an applied research environment Sharp communication skills - you can talk to scientists and stakeholders alike Compensation target: $200k - $240k (plus RSU, Benefits, bonus) Show more Show less