Principal AI/ML Researcher

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Set the architectural direction for the development of large-scale models spanning wearable sensor data, text, biomarkers, and behavioral signals, and personally own the highest-stakes, hardest-to-reverse design decisions.

• Identify which research bets in self-supervised and representation learning are worth making, and drive the most ambiguous and unproven ones from thesis to validated, production capability.

• Contribute to the broader AI strategy and standards at WHOOP, shaping the platform, compute, and infrastructure choices the team operates on, not just working within them.

• Partner across research, product, and engineering to connect technical breakthroughs to product and business outcomes.

• Raise the technical bar across the team: grow staff and senior engineers, strengthen design-review and evaluation norms, and act as a force multiplier.

• Represent WHOOP's technical work externally, helping with recruiting, partnerships, and visibility in the broader AI research community.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Advanced degree (Master’s or Ph.D.) or equivalent depth, with extensive experience in large-scale machine learning and AI research.

• A track record of owning technical direction for a significant area and making architectural decisions whose impact outlived any single project.

• Demonstrated ability to take ambiguous, high-risk research directions all the way to production impact and the judgment to discontinue those that will not.

• Deep expertise in modern deep learning (transformers, state space models), multimodal training, self-supervised and representation learning, RL-based post-training (PPO/DPO/GRPO), and large-scale distributed training (data, model, and context parallelism).

• A history of being a technical authority that teams defer to, and evidence of multiplying their output.

• Excellent communication and the ability to influence both the engineering bench and senior leadership.

• Publications and evidence of community building at top-tier machine learning venues.

• Passion for WHOOP's mission to improve human performance and extend healthspan through science and technology.