Research Scientist, Animation Direction, Level 4 Job at Snap Inc. in Los Angeles

Overview Snap Inc is a technology company. We believe the camera presents the greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate. Snap contributes to human progress by empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together. Snap’s core products are Snapchat, Lens Studio, and Spectacles. Snap Research serves as an innovation engine, with projects ranging from solving hard technical problems to explorations that can lead to fundamental paradigm shifts in how people communicate and express themselves. We are looking for a Research Scientist to join our Computational Imaging Research Team in NYC.

The Computational Imaging team focuses on enhancing user experiences with our photo and short form video products, enabling creators to make Lenses more easily in Lens Studio. The 2025 focus areas include improving image and video quality (quality assessment, video super resolution, compression, image editing) and animations (animation generation, 3D avatar, video generation for animations). Research areas include computer vision, computational imaging / photography, 3D motion / video generation, efficient large language models, and more.

What you’ll do Propose and develop cutting-edge multimodal techniques for 3D human animation and video generation — enabling expressive Bitmoji avatars and next-gen Snapchat video generation experiences

Build models that map text, audio, video, and music to 3D animation and drive downstream tasks such as background video generation for animation rendering and audio-driven lip-synced video generation

Advance avatar technologies including animatable 3D Gaussian avatars, head / body reconstruction, and animation control

Collaborate with product teams to deploy research at scale and publish at top-tier academic venues

Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities Ability to define impactful research problems and deliver practical solutions in academic and product contexts

Deep expertise in human motion modeling, facial / body animation, and generative modeling (e.g., text-to-motion, text-to-image, text-to-video)

Familiarity with video generation, avatar representations (e.g., mesh, NeRF, Gaussian), and rendering pipelines

Strong prototyping and engineering skills (Python, PyTorch, C++), familiar with large-scale distributed ML training on GCP / AWS clusters

Proven ability to lead and mentor interns, PhD students, and junior researchers, and to collaborate effectively with product teams

Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills

Minimum Qualifications PhD in a technical field such as Computer Science or Electrical Engineering, or equivalent experience

Hands-on experience with mainstream generative models (Diffusion, Transformers, GANs, VAEs) for animation or video

Research or product experience in 3D human motion generation from signals such as text or audio; image / video generation; 3D avatar reconstruction and animation; or multimodal generation

Preferred Qualifications Publications in top-tier venues as the main contributor; contributions to open-source projects, code or dataset releases

Experience with large-scale dataset curation and distributed ML model training such as image / video generation model pre-training or post-training

Strong foundation in computer vision, 3D graphics, and multimodal learning

Benefits and Policies Default Together : Snap expects team members to work in an office 4+ days per week to foster culture and collaboration.

Equal Opportunity Employer : Snap is an equal opportunity employer committed to employment opportunities regardless of race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other protected classification, in accordance with applicable laws. EOE, including disability / vets. For accommodations, contact accommodations-ext@snap.com.

Our Benefits : Snap offers paid parental leave, comprehensive medical coverage, emotional and mental health support programs, and compensation packages that enable employees to share in Snap’s long-term success.

Privacy and Compliance : Applicant and Candidate Privacy Policy and related information are available for review.

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