# Applied AI Research Source: https://realanalystjobs.com/job/applied-ai-research-smbc-aeaa6b1c Applied AI Research at SMBC, an on-site role based in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. Experience level: 8+ Years. Posted on 13 November 2026, read from SMBC's own careers page (SuccessFactors), which RealAnalystJobs re-checks daily and removes the role when it closes. SMBC has approved H-1B petitions on USCIS record (employer-wide, not a promise for this role). Updated 15 November 2026. ## Key facts - Company: [SMBC](https://realanalystjobs.com/companies/smbc) - Location: Charlotte, North Carolina, USA - Work mode: On-site - Posted: Nov 13, 2026 - Employment type: Full time - Experience level: 8+ Years - Source: SMBC's careers page (SuccessFactors), re-checked daily Skills: [Python](https://realanalystjobs.com/skills/python), Azure ## Visa sponsorship The posting does not say. SMBC had H-1B petitions approved for 165 workers in fiscal year 2026 (USCIS). That is history, not a promise for this role. [See the record](https://realanalystjobs.com/companies/smbc#h1b-record) ## About this role SMBC Group is a top-tier global financial group. Headquartered in Tokyo and with a 400-year history, SMBC Group offers a diverse range of financial services, including banking, leasing, securities, credit cards, and consumer finance. The Group has more than 130 offices and 80,000 employees worldwide in nearly 40 countries. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Inc. (SMFG) is the holding company of SMBC Group, which is one of the three largest banking groups in Japan. SMFG’s shares trade on the Tokyo, Nagoya, and New York (NYSE: SMFG) stock exchanges. In the Americas, SMBC Group has a presence in the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Peru. Backed by the capital strength of SMBC Group and the value of its relationships in Asia, the Group offers a range of commercial and investment banking services to its corporate, institutional, and municipal clients. It connects a diverse client base to local markets and the organization’s extensive global network. The Group’s operating companies in the Americas include Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. (SMBC), SMBC Nikko Securities America, Inc., SMBC Capital Markets, Inc., SMBC MANUBANK, JRI America, Inc., SMBC Leasing and Finance, Inc., Banco Sumitomo Mitsui Brasileiro S.A., and Sumitomo Mitsui Finance and Leasing Co., Ltd. Role Description As the Director of Applied AI Research in the Platform Engineering team, you will define and lead the applied research agenda for enterprise AI/GenAI. You will identify and rigorously evaluate emerging models, techniques, and tools that can improve business value, engineering productivity, risk management, and platform capabilities. Your scope will include foundation models, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic architectures, multimodal AI, fine-tuning, evaluation, and other rapidly evolving approaches. This is a hands-on research leadership role focused on converting technical uncertainty into evidence-based enterprise decisions. You will establish disciplined experimentation and benchmarking practices, build reference prototypes, partner with architecture, capability development, AI-Ops, security, risk, and business teams, and build a research function that advances innovation while maintaining responsible-AI, privacy, security, and regulatory expectations. Role Objectives • Set the applied AI research agenda in alignment with enterprise strategy, platform priorities, business opportunities, and risk considerations. • Evaluate foundation models, frameworks, and tools across quality, safety, latency, cost, scalability, privacy, and operational readiness. • Lead experiments and benchmarks for retrieval-augmented generation, agentic systems, multimodal AI, fine-tuning, synthetic data, small language models, and other emerging techniques. • Build reference prototypes and reusable research assets that demonstrate feasibility and create a clear transition path into architecture, capability development, and platform engineering roadmaps. • Establish repeatable evaluation methodologies, benchmark datasets, scoring rubrics, experiment tracking, and documentation standards that support reproducible and auditable conclusions. • Advance research on responsible AI, model safety, bias, explainability, privacy, security, and governance controls appropriate for regulated enterprise use. • Maintain a structured view of the external AI ecosystem, including cloud providers, research organizations, vendors, and open-source communities, and recommend technologies for adoption or further study. • Translate research findings into clear executive guidance, technical standards, architecture decisions, investment recommendations, and platform roadmap inputs. • Build, mentor, and lead an applied AI research team while strengthening experimentation, technical writing, and knowledge-sharing practices across the engineering organization. Qualifications and Skills • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Data Science, Statistics, Engineering, or a related field; a master's degree or Ph.D. is strongly preferred. • 8+ years of hands-on experience in applied machine learning, AI research, or advanced AI engineering, including 3+ years in a research leadership, principal scientist, architect, or technical lead capacity. • Strong expertise in experimental design, statistical analysis, benchmarking, ablation studies, and reproducible evaluation of complex AI systems. • Advanced Python skills and hands-on expertise with machine learning libraries and model ecosystems such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face Transformers, and commercial foundation-model APIs. • Deep knowledge of foundation models, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic systems, multimodal AI, fine-tuning, embeddings, vector databases, and model evaluation. • Demonstrated experience evaluating AI systems for quality, safety, robustness, latency, cost, and operational suitability using quantitative and qualitative methods. • Hands-on experience with cloud and data platforms such as Azure, Databricks, MLflow, vector search, model serving, and experiment tracking. • Proven ability to move research into production by partnering with architects, platform engineers, capability teams, and AI-Ops practitioners. • Strong understanding of responsible AI, model risk, privacy, cybersecurity, explainability, and governance expectations in a regulated environment. • Excellent technical writing, executive communication, and team leadership skills, with the ability to explain complex research findings to technical and non-technical audiences. SMBC’s employees participate in a Hybrid workforce model that provides employees with an opportunity to work from home, as well as, from an SMBC office. SMBC requires that employees live within a reasonable commuting distance of their office location. Prospective candidates will learn more about their specific hybrid work schedule during their interview process. Hybrid work may not be permitted for certain ro Description from SMBC's public careers feed, reproduced so you can read the role here. Apply on the company's own site; Real Analyst Jobs never submits anything for you. ## How to apply Open [this role on Real Analyst Jobs](https://realanalystjobs.com/job/applied-ai-research-smbc-aeaa6b1c) and use Apply now there to reach the employer's application. The listing is re-checked against SMBC's careers page daily and removed when it closes. ## SMBC 22 open analyst roles on Real Analyst Jobs. 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