Research Scientist, Animation Direction, 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 Companyu2019s 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 Snapu2019s 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 Snapu2019s 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 cutting-edge multimodal techniques for 3D human animation and video generation u2014 enabling expressive Bitmoji avatars and next-gen Snapchat video gen experiences + Build models that map text, audio, video, and music to 3D animation and drive video generation downstream tasks, such as background video generation for animation rendering and audio-driven lip synced video generation + Advance avatar technologies including animatable 3D Gaussian avatars, head/body reconstruction, and animation control + Collaborate with product teams to deploy research at scale and publish at top-tier academic venues Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities: + Ability to define impactful research problems and deliver practical solutions, both in academic and product contexts + Deep expertise in human motion modeling, facial/body animation, and generative modeling (e.g., text-to-motion, text-to-image, text-to-video, etc) + Familiarity with video generation, avatar representations (e.g., mesh, NeRF, Gaussian), and rendering pipelines + Strong prototyping and engineering skills (Python, PyTorch, C++), familiar with large scale distributed ML training on GCP/AWS clusters + Proven ability to lead and mentor interns, PhD students, and junior researchers, as well as collaborate effectively with product teams + Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration 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 + Hands-on experience with mainstream generative models (Diffusion, Transformers, GANs, VAEs) for animation or video + Research or product experience in either of the following: 3D human motion generation from various signals such as text or audio; image/video generation; 3D avatar reconstruction and animation; or multimodal generation Preferred Qualifications: + Publications in top-tier venues as the main contributor (e.g., CVPR, SIGGRAPH, NeurIPS, ICCV, ECCV, ICLR); contributed to popular open-source projects code/dataset release + Hands-on experience in large scale dataset curation and distributed ML model training such as image/video generation model pre-training or post-training + Strong foundation in computer vision, 3D graphics, and multimodal learning If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please donu2019t be shy and provide us some information (.

Created: 2025-10-02