Job Details

Overview

Research Scientist, Earth AI — Google

Applicants in San Francisco: Qualified applications with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act.

Note: By applying to this position you will have an opportunity to share your preferred working location from the following: Mountain View, CA, USA; San Francisco, CA, USA.

Minimum qualifications:

• PhD in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience in AI research and development, including in generative AI.
• Experience in Python and machine learning frameworks (e.g., Jax, TensorFlow, PyTorch).
• One or more accepted scientific publication submissions for conferences, journals, or public repositories (such as CVPR, ICCV, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR).

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience with geospatial data (e.g., satellite imagery, GIS).
• Experience in large-scale training of multimodal generative models.
• Experience in building multi-agent systems.
• Understanding of large language models (LLMs) and their application to agentic systems.
• Ability to lead a research project from conception to a successful outcome.

About the job

As an organization, Google maintains a portfolio of research projects driven by fundamental research, new product innovation, product contribution and infrastructure goals, while providing individuals and teams the freedom to emphasize specific types of work. As a Research Scientist, you'll setup large-scale tests and deploy promising ideas quickly and broadly, managing deadlines and deliverables while applying the latest theories to develop new and improved products, processes, or technologies. From creating experiments and prototyping implementations to designing new architectures, our research scientists work on real-world problems that span the breadth of computer science, such as machine (and deep) learning, data mining, natural language processing, hardware and software performance analysis, improving mobile compilers, and core search.

As a Research Scientist, you'll also actively contribute to the wider research community by sharing and publishing your findings, with ideas inspired by internal projects as well as collaborations with research programs at partner universities and technical institutes around the world.

EarthAI is an exciting effort to build and bring together geospatial AI models with Gemini's agentic reasoning to help people, businesses and organizations address the planet's most critical needs. This includes models to improve urban planning and public health by providing understanding of earth imagery, population dynamics and urban mobility, as well as weather predictions, flood forecasting and wildfire detection.

Google Research is building the next generation of intelligent systems for all Google products. To achieve this, we work on projects that utilize the latest computer science techniques developed by software developers and research scientists. Google Research teams collaborate closely with other teams across Google, maintaining the flexibility to adapt projects to meet evolving business needs.

Compensation

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $141,000-$202,000 plus bonus, equity and benefits. Salary ranges depend on role, level, and location. Your recruiter can share the specific range for your preferred location during the hiring process. Compensation details reflect base salary and do not include bonus, equity, or benefits.

Learn more about benefits at Google.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement experiments, and evaluate algorithms and data curation for multi-modal generative AI over geospatial data such as satellite imagery, street-level data, population, and environmental signals.
• Train and tune Gemini models and agents to enhance geospatial reasoning capabilities, including task understanding, planning, and multi-step execution in geographical contexts.
• Establish benchmarks and publish research to demonstrate credibility of Google's geospatial models.
• Report and present research findings clearly and efficiently, internally and externally, and collaborate with teams to meet ambitious research goals.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams across Google to apply this technology to real-world problems; contribute to research outcomes that influence products.

Google is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. See Google's EEO Policy and EEO is the Law. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know by completing our Accommodations for Applicants form.