AI Research Manager - Machine Learning

About the role

The AI Research Manager oversees the ML research agenda at Nubank, a digital financial services platform. The role involves managing a team of world-class researchers, focusing on long-term, impactful research that compounds into production capabilities critical for Nubank's future.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and advocate for a team of world-class ML researchers, fostering an environment of psychological safety, high ambition, and rigorous scientific inquiry.
• Maintain the operating health of the team, including performance, career growth, hiring, and compensation cycles for elite individual contributors who often operate at staff-and-above technical depth.
• Attract and retain top-tier research talent in a competitive market, and build a reputation for the team as a place the best researchers want to be.
• Own the operating cadence of a portfolio of two-to-three concurrent, quarter-scale research bets, from problem framing and OKRs through progress tracking and clear go/no-go decisions.
• Allocate scarce, high-value resources, most notably GPU capacity, across competing research priorities, balancing exploration against the bets most likely to compound.
• Protect deep-focus research time. Sustain a long-term agenda in a fast-moving company means deliberately creating the space for rigorous, multi-quarter work, so the team can pursue ambitious bets instead of being fully absorbed by short-term applied demands.
• Raise the bar on research rigor and communication: strong experimental design, peer review, and reproducibility.
• Cultivate the team's standing in the broader research community.
• Partner closely with senior technical leads who drive architecture and scientific direction, aligning operational execution with the long-term research roadmap so that scientific and operating decisions reinforce each other.
• Translate complex, frontier technical progress (training efficiency, causal inference, novel architectures) into clear, high-impact narratives for executive leadership, connecting research milestones to business outcomes.
• Bridge foundational research and long-term business strategy, ensuring the team's technical inputs directly enable Nubank's AI-first direction.

Requirements

Experience: 3+ years of direct people-management experience leading applied AI research or core machine learning teams at big tech companies, frontier labs, or comparable high-scale environments.

Education: M.S. or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Applied Mathematics, or a related quantitative field, with a strong working understanding of core AI methodologies.

Track record: Proven ability to build, scale, and retain high-performing research or advanced applied-science teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Technical depth: Deep conceptual familiarity with at least one of our core research areas: Foundation models & LLMs, Behavioral & sequential models, Decisioning & optimization, Training & inference efficiency.
• Communication: Exceptional storytelling skills, with a track record of translating complex technical milestones into business impact for senior and C-level audiences.
• Environment: Experience operating in global, distributed teams and navigating the path from foundational research to scalable, production-grade systems.

Qualifications

• Experience: 3+ years of direct people-management experience leading applied AI research or core machine learning teams at big tech companies, frontier labs, or comparable high-scale environments.
• Education: M.S. or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Applied Mathematics, or a related quantitative field, with a strong working understanding of core AI methodologies.
• Track record: Proven ability to build, scale, and retain high-performing research or advanced applied-science teams.

Skills

• Exceptional leadership and mentoring skills.
• Strong project management and organizational skills.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience in managing and allocating resources effectively.
• Knowledge of AI methodologies and research trends.

Benefits

• Total compensation includes base salary, RSUs, and benefits.
• Base salary: $324k
• Opportunity of earning equity at NuMedical Insurance
• Dental and Vision Insurance
• Life Insurance and AD&D
• Extended maternity and paternity leaves
• NuLanguage - Our language learning program
• NuCare - Our mental health and wellness assistance program
• 401K Savings Plans - Health Saving Account and Flexible Spending Account
• Work-from-home allowance
• Relocation assistance package, if applicable

Pay

$324k base salary

Schedule

Hybrid 2-3 times/week