Senior Deep Learning Scientist- DVPS

About Pi School

Pi School is on a mission to empower businesses and professionals to leverage AI’s transformative capabilities. We believe technology should be an enabler, not a barrier, and it should empower individuals and businesses to grow, innovate, and stay connected. We strive for a world where AI and human potential coexist harmoniously, reshaping the way we work, learn, and prosper.

Born in 2017 from the expertise of Translated, an industry pioneer with over two decades of leadership in AI + human translation, Pi School has helped over 100 companies integrate AI solutions to improve their operations, enhance decision-making, and achieve sustainable growth.

Pi School remains at the forefront of the ever‑evolving AI landscape and collaborates with prominent research centres and organisations worldwide, such as the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Commission, to harness AI for both cutting‑edge research and practical solutions, driving progress in science and beyond. Our approach is founded on purposeful, impactful work, leveraging technology as a force for good.

We are looking for a Senior Deep Learning Scientist to work in our office in Rome.

Pi School has just been awarded a grant on DVPS, a 29M€, 4‑year collaborative research project starting in July 2025. DVPS develops the science of multimodal foundation models and deploys them on problems in Earth observation, language and cardiology. DVPS stands for the project's motto, Diversibus Viis Plurima Solvo, meaning "Through various paths, I solve many problems".

The project is endowed with computing resources matching its ambition. We estimate it will run on 30M GPU‑hours provided by EuroHPC, running on the major Exascale and Petascale compute infrastructure in Europe.

For maximum impact, all research outcomes of DVPS, such as trained models, datasets, and evaluation benchmarks, will be open‑sourced on HuggingFace.

Responsibilities

You will be part of a team of engineers and scientists dedicated to DVPS within Pi School’s AI Research team, which works on several pieces of AI technology.

In this role, you will:

• work with data, compute and algorithms
• design of deep learning multimodal neural architectures
• design experiments, implement them in code, run them on large (GPU on HPC) compute, run evaluations
• monitor and benchmark the state of the art
• have the opportunity to give guidance to more junior team members such as PhD students and interns
• coordinate with our partners on our research roadmap
• adapt the project's pace to the rapid scientific development in our field
• organize publications and open‑sourcing efforts

Requirements

Completed PhD or 4 years of industry research experience in a relevant field of deep learning, machine learning, or applied (preferably language, clinical medicine, robotics, vision, audio)

experience guiding junior researchers, defining a research project and conducting experiments

• Ability to design and run experiments methodically, analyse results, and iterate quickly
• Strong communication skills and proficiency in English
• Experience documenting technical work and research findings

Technical Skills

• Excellent programming skills in Python
• Proficiency in deep learning frameworks (PyTorch or TensorFlow)
• Experience in Linux/Unix environments
• Hands‑on experience with transformer architectures and the HuggingFace ecosystem
• Experience training and fine‑tuning language models using libraries like Axolotl, Unsloth, or similar
• Familiarity with at least one modality deeply (language, vision, or audio)
• Ability to translate AI research papers into practical implementations
• Experience using version control (Git), experiment tracking tools (e.g. MLflow)
• Hands‑on experience running GPU experiments (HPC or cloud: AWS, GCP, RunPod, Lambda Labs)

Bonus points if…

• you’re strong in GPU training and inference optimization
• you’re a polyglot
• you have open‑source contributions
• you have published at tier‑1 ML/AI conferences such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, CVPR, ICCV

Our office

Pi School is hosted at Pi Campus, a working environment immersed in nature. Six luxury villas in Rome (Italy) have been converted into functional offices to foster talent growth. Pi Campus is also a venture firm created by Translated to reinvest part of its profits into promising AI startups.

Benefits and Perks

Our working environment is both relaxed and intense. We are passionate about our mission, and our work is highly regarded in our industry.

• Fresh fruit and snacks
• Access to the pool and Turkish bath
• Sports activities: gym and pilates
• Free time in between your tasks to work on your personal projects
• Access to the Pi Campus parties and gatherings

Diversity

At Pi School, we proudly embrace and celebrate each individual’s unique qualities in our team, regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other differences. We recognise that these diverse perspectives empower us to overcome challenges, foster innovation, and drive excellence. As an inclusive and equal opportunity employer, we are committed to cultivating an environment where everyone feels welcome, valued, and supported to achieve their full potential.