Research Scientist – World Modeling
New York City, BostonFull-timePosted 11mo ago
About the role
Design and build learned world models and digital twins to represent complex, multi-modal operational data for forecasting, optimization, and decision-making in critical industries.
Responsibilities
- Design and build learned world models that compress messy, multi-modal operational data (notes, transcripts, contracts, telemetry) into tractable, decision-relevant representations.
- Model the transition dynamics of real operations — how a workforce, facility, or network evolves state-to-state — so downstream systems can run counterfactuals before a decision touches a real person or asset.
- Build and validate digital twins of customer operations, benchmarked against replayable, real-world testbeds with defensible ground truth.
- Partner closely with the forecasting and optimization teams to ensure representations are suitable substrates for calibrated predictions and for finding optimal actions.
- Bridge research into practice by partnering with engineers to deploy world models into live customer environments and push toward end-to-end production systems.
Qualifications
- PhD degree in Computer Science, Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, or Applied Mathematics or equivalent research/industry experience.
- Deep experience in simulation or world modeling.
- Experience with novel machine learning techniques for control and optimization, including test-time search and reinforcement learning for sequential decision-making.
- Comfort implementing and debugging large-scale optimization systems, and designing benchmarks with real ground truth.
- Motivation to impact critical industries including healthcare, supply chains, energy, and finance.
- Proven track record of execution.
- Excellent communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Ownership mindset.
- Passion for AI's transformative potential.
Skills
Required:World modelingSimulationReinforcement learningOptimization
Benefits
- Competitive compensation
- Equity
- 401(k) matching
- Comprehensive health and family benefits
- Lunch every day
Last updated Oct 7, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
About Percepta
Harness the Frontier.
Percepta is a General Catalyst transformation company helping critical institutions actualize AI transformation.
AITransformationEnterprisesCritical Industries
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