Technical Leader - Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Team Description: Our Computer Vision team is a leader in the creation of cutting-edge algorithms and software for automated image and video analysis. Our solutions embrace deep learning and add measurable value to government agencies, commercial organizations, and academic institutions worldwide. We understand the difficulties in extracting, interpreting, and utilizing information across images, video, metadata, and text, and we recognize the need for robust, affordable solutions. We seek to advance the fields of computer vision and deep learning through research and development and through collaborative projects that build on our open source software platform, such as Kitware Image and Video Exploitation and Retrieval (KWIVER) toolkit.
Researchers at Kitware enjoy support and encouragement for participation in national and international conferences, and are given ample opportunities to seek funding to grow and develop their own research areas, if they desire. The Kitware Vision Group has collaborated with more than 25 universities in the past five years and maintains active involvement in major vision, AI, and ML conferences.
About the Projects: NLP and Computer Vision research is increasingly interrelated, with common computational approaches and the increasing availability of text + image/video benchmarks. Likewise, multi-modal domains such as social media and news stories are of increasing interest for applications such as disinformation detection, attribution, and characterization. In addition to this, projects at Kitware require understanding written instructions, including natural language rules.

In This Position You Will:

• Bring your technical expertise and project management skills to lead small teams of researchers and engineers on advanced R&D projects funded by government and commercial customers.
• Collaborate with external, well-known academic and industry researchers in Natural Language Processing, ML, AI, and computer vision.
• Lead proposals for new funding from government R&D organizations and/or commercial companies.
• Develop and evaluate algorithms to understand the textual content of textual and multi-modal data, and/or perform reasoning on extracted data.
• Enjoy support and encouragement for participation in national and international NLP, machine learning, AI, and/or computer vision conferences.

Required Qualifications:

• PhD in Computer Science or related field with a minimum of 6 years relevant experience and/or a Master's degree with 8 years experience.
• Strong publication history in NLP (ACL, EMNLP, NAACL) conferences, or other AI venues incorporating NLP (AAAI, ICML, ICLR, NeurIPS). Candidates should include a detailed list of publications as part of their resume/CV.
• Experience collaborating successfully with others and thriving in a fast-paced and dynamic work environment.
• Experience leading federal and/or commercial business development activities and winning R&D funding.
• Experience developing and nurturing project teams, building an environment of collaboration.
• Excellent project management skills with demonstrable efforts leading and delivering complex research projects on time, within budget, and with a high level of customer satisfaction.
• Experience in supervising and reviewing research and software developed by others.
• Experience designing and implementing complex software systems.
• Due to contractual restrictions, candidates that are US Persons (citizens, permanent residents, asylees or refugees) will be preferred for this position.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with natural language text generation using one or more of GPT-2, BERT, or Grover.
• Past work applying NLP to textual instructions and/or rules.

Company Description:Kitware is a research and development software solutions provider with a mission to advance science, make a positive impact, and share our results all within a collaborative, employee-focused work environment that is friendly, fair, and flexible. Our work is improving healthcare outcomes, increasing national security, and advancing our national computing infrastructure. Our customers and collaborators include top universities from around the world, government organizations, national research labs, medical device manufacturers, car manufacturers, financial institutions, and many others.   
Kitware is proud to be 100% employee-owned, and Great Place to Work-Certified™.   
Additional Information:Our team members enjoy a small company environment, flexibility in work assignments, and high levels of independence and responsibility. Besides a great work environment, our comprehensive benefits package includes a competitive compensation plan, tuition reimbursement program, flexible working hours, six weeks paid time off, 401(k), health insurance, life insurance, short- and long-term disability insurance, bonus plan, and free coffee, drinks, and snacks.  
Kitware actively subscribes to a policy of equal employment opportunity. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, protected veteran status, uniformed service member status, or any other characteristics protected by applicable law.  
To be in compliance with the requirements for federal government contractors, all Kitware new hires must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 prior to their start date. Kitware will consider exceptions for religious and medical reasons, where appropriate. “Fully vaccinated” means you must have both doses of a 2-dose vaccine and two weeks have elapsed since the second dose, or have received 1 dose of a 1-dose vaccine and two weeks have elapsed since the dose. Proof of your vaccination status in the form of a copy of a CDC vaccine card, or notice of approval of a religious or medical exemption by Kitware human resources, must be submitted prior to your start date.