Director of AI R&D

Aleph Alpha Research’s mission is to deliver category-defining AI innovation that enables open, accessible, and trustworthy deployment of GenAI in industrial applications. Our organization develops foundational models and next-generation methods that make it easy and affordable for Aleph Alpha’s customers to increase productivity in development, engineering, logistics, and manufacturing processes.

As a Director of AI R&D at Aleph Alpha (f/m/d), you manage, co‑own and help drive the engineering and science excellence bar across a major section of our large‑scale foundation model development lifecycle — such as pre‑training, post‑training, or a dedicated capability‑oriented R&D domain (e.g. explainability, controllability, or efficiency).

You will contribute to defining and executing the research and engineering scope for your area - empowering highly autonomous teams to deliver world‑class models and methods with scientific rigor, operational excellence, and organizational clarity.

Team Culture

At Aleph Alpha, we foster a culture built on ownership, autonomy, and empowerment. Teams and individual contributors are trusted to take responsibility for their work and drive meaningful impact. We maintain a flat organizational structure with efficient, supportive management that enables quick decision‑making, open communication, and a strong sense of shared purpose.

Your Responsibilities

• Manage one or more AI R&D teams focusing on a model lifecycle stage (e.g. pretraining, post training, or an exploratory research domain).
• Serve as a line manager responsible for the growth, motivation, and performance of researchers and engineers across various IC levels.
• Co‑own the technical and scientific direction for your area — balancing mid-term exploration with near-term delivery.
• Uphold and propagate Aleph Alpha’s cultural principles of autonomy, ownership, and peer accountability.
• Partner with other Directors and Principal ICs to ensure architectural coherence, infrastructure readiness, and effective collaboration across R&D domains.
• Contribute technically to select work-streams (e.g. scaling and efficiency studies, reinforcement learning, evaluation pipelines, or capability alignment).
• Drive organizational efficiency - ensuring clear goals, minimal blockers, and consistent communication between teams and leadership.
• Represent your teams’ work within and outside Aleph Alpha, sharing insights and progress with internal stakeholders and the broader research community.

Your profile

• Strong background in managing AI research or ML engineering teams engaged in model development, training, or optimization at scale.
• Proven technical expertise in one or more of the following: LLM pre-training (data and compute optimization), post‑training (fine‑tuning, reinforcement learning, evaluation), emerging GenAI research areas (e.g. safety, compute efficiency), or other areas of machine learning.
• Ability to nurture highly autonomous contributors while maintaining strategic coherence and scientific excellence.
• Experience translating research goals into clear, achievable execution plans.
• Excellent interpersonal skills and a collaborative mindset suited to a peer‑driven, low‑hierarchy environment.
• Skilled in balancing hands‑on technical engagement with effective people and project leadership.
• Willingness to regularly work from our Heidelberg or Berlin hubs to collaborate closely with teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong leadership mindset and skill that aligns well with the teal organization setup at Aleph Alpha
• PhD or comparable research experience in machine learning, computer science, or related technical field.
• Record of contributions to state-of-the-art model training methods.
• Demonstrated success in building or scaling high-performing teams in a research‑driven environment.
• Commitment to fostering team diversity and developing future technical leaders.

What We Offer

• Become part of an AI revolution
• 30 days of paid vacation
• Access to a variety of fitness & wellness offerings via Wellhub
• Mental health support through nilo.health
• Substantially subsidized company pension plan for your future security
• Subsidized Germany-wide transportation ticket
• Budget for additional technical equipment
• Flexible working hours for better work-life balance and hybrid working model
• Virtual Stock Option Plan
• JobRad® Bike Lease