AI Researcher Jobs in Pennsylvania
AI Researcher jobs in Pennsylvania are in strong demand, concentrated in the healthcare AI, defense systems, and financial technology sectors, with openings at every level from junior research scientist to principal investigator. Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and the Greater Lehigh Valley are the busiest hiring centers, anchored by employers such as IBM, Comcast, and Penn Medicine. The most sought-after specialties in Pennsylvania are natural language processing, computer vision, and machine learning applied to clinical or defense datasets. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
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APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS:
CURRENT PENN STATE EMPLOYEE (faculty, staff, technical service, or student), please login to Workday to complete the internal application process . Please do not apply here, apply internally through Workday.
CURRENT PENN STATE STUDENT (not employed previously at the university) and seeking employment with Penn State, please login to Workday to complete the student application process. Please do not apply here, apply internally through Workday.
If you are NOT a current employee or student, please click “Apply” and complete the application process for external applicants .
Approval of remote and hybrid work is not guaranteed regardless of work location. For additional information on remote work at Penn State, see Notice to Out of State Applicants .
POSITION SPECIFICS
The Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS) at Penn State seeks a Resea rch Computing Engineer to join our technical team. This role supports Penn State’s resea rch mission by designing, operating , automating, and optimizing the GPU and AI and computing infrastructure used by resea rchers across the university , along with the high-performance computing systems that support it.
This position will be filled at the Research Computing Systems Engineer - Intermediate Professional level.
Candidates must be U.S. citizens due to specific access requirements associated with this position.
This position is ideal for an engineer who enjoys building reliable, scalable systems for machine learning, data-intensive research, and advanced computing workloads. The successful candidate will work across GPU systems, HPC platforms, storage, networking, automation, and user-facing research workflows to enable cutting-edge research in AI, simulation, and computational science.
Work Arrangement : This is a full-time position, which will report to the Research HPC Manager and requires on-site work at University Park and is not supportive of remote work .
As part of a collaborative engineering team, you’ll contribute across a broad range of responsibilities including:
Collaborate with teammates, users, and vendor support to diagnose issues and implement solutions across compute , storage, networking, and software environments.
Monitor, maintain , automate, and improve AI and HPC systems and supporting infrastructure.
D esign, deploy, operate , troubleshoot, and optimize systems using DevOps and infrastructure-as-code practices.
Support GPU-accelerated computing environments for AI, machine learning, and scientific workloads.
Partner with researchers and ICDS staff to understand workload requirements and develop practical engineering solutions for system configuration, performance, and research workflows.
Support security, logging, documentation, and compliance process for the systems we operate , including environments subject to federal research security.
Contribute to planning, requirements gathering, process improvement, and operational readiness for new services and infrastructure.
Provide timely updates to system documentation and respond to user questions with clear, actionable guidance.
Evaluate and improve tools, platforms, and workflows that support AI model development, training, inference, and data movement at scale.
Required qualifications and skills include the following:
Ability to work effectively in a Linux environment, including command-line tools, file editing, POSIX permissions, and system configuration.
Strong scripting ability in Bash and Python.
Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to debug complex systems.
Ability to work collaboratively as part of a technical team.
Experience using AI tools or AI agents to improve programming, debugging, development, or prototyping workflows.
Clear written and verbal communication skills .
Preferred qualifications:
Experience with one or more of the following is helpful but not required .
AI and HPC Workloads
Administration of multi-GPU nodes a t scale , including driver and firmware lifecycle management, NVLink / NVSwitch topology validation, GPU health monitoring and tuning for multi-GPU or multi-node GPU workloads.
Experience supporting AI/ML infrastructure, including environments used for model training, inference, experiment workflows, and large-scale data processing.
Experience with job schedulers such as Slurm , PBS, HTCondor , or LSF.
Software development experience and familiarity with HPC programming environments such as C/C++, Fortran, CUDA, MPI, or OpenMP.
Infrastructure and Automation
DevOps experience, including Git-based workflows, CI/CD, automation, and collaborative development practices.
Experience with system deployment tools such as xCAT , Warewulf , OpenCHAMI , OpenStack/Bifrost, or MAAS.
Experience administering or supporting Kubernetes.
Experience with virtualization and containerization technologies such as VMware, Docker, Apptainer , or Podman .
Networking and Storage
Networking experience, including EVPN, BGP, and IPv6.
Experience with high-speed interconnects such as InfiniBand, HPE Slingshot, or similar HPC fabrics.
Experience with HPC or distributed storage systems such as GPFS, Lustre , Ceph, or VAST.
Observability and Security
Monitoring and observability experience with tools such as Grafana, Graphite, Prometheus, VictoriaMetrics , or InfluxDB .
Experience with databases such as MySQL/MariaDB or PostgreSQL.
Security experience including identity and access management, single sign-on, and LDAP/Active Directory.
Background and Process
Familiarity with Agile project development.
Prior experience in academic research computing, research data infrastructure, or large-scale shared computing environments.
Application Instructions: To receive full consideration for the position, applications should include:
- A cover letter expressing the candidate’s interest in the role
- A current Curriculum Vitae (CV) or Resume
Why ICDS
At ICDS, you’ll buil d and su pport infrastruct u re that enables advanced research in artificial intelligence, machine learning, simulation, data science, and computationally intensive discovery. You’ll work on clusters, storage and GPU systems Penn State researchers rely on for AI, machine learning and computational research . You won’t own a narrow slice of that. Our engineers work across provisioning, scheduling, storage, networking , GPU infrastructure and user-facing tooling. You 'll debug problems from a user ’s job submission all the way down to drivers and system fir mware , and you’ll learn a lot on the way.
You'll also b e close to the science . You ’ll talk to the people running the workloads, understand what they’re trying to accomplish , and engineer systems around actual researc h needs rather than requirements handed down from somewhere else . It’s a collaborative team, and the problems are rarely the same twice .
MINIMUM EDUCATION, WORK EXPERIENCE & REQUIRED CERTIFICATIONS
Bachelor's Degree
1+ years of relevant experience; or an equivalent combination of education and experience accepted
Required Certifications:
NoneBACKGROUND CHECKS/CLEARANCES
Employment with the University will require successful completion of background check(s) in accordance with University policies.Penn State does not sponsor or take over sponsorship of a staff employment Visa. Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S.
SALARY & BENEFITS
The salary range for this position, including all possible grades, is $81,312.00 - $122,016.00.Salary Structure - Information on Penn State's salary structure
Penn State provides a competitive benefits package for full-time employees designed to support both personal and professional well-being. In addition to comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, employees enjoy robust retirement plans and substantial paid time off which includes holidays, vacation and sick time. One of the standout benefits is the generous 75% tuition discount, available to employees as well as eligible spouses and children. For more detailed information, please visit our Benefits Page .
CAMPUS SECURITY CRIME STATISTICS
Pursuant to the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act and the Pennsylvania Act of 1988, Penn State publishes a combined Annual Security and Annual Fire Safety Report (ASR). The ASR includes crime statistics and institutional policies concerning campus security, such as those concerning alcohol and drug use, crime prevention, the reporting of crimes, sexual assault, and other matters. The ASR is available for review here .
EEO IS THE LAW
Penn State is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to providing employment opportunities to all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status. If you are unable to use our online application process due to an impairment or disability, please contact 814-865-1473.
Penn State is committed to and accountable for advancing equity, respect, and belonging. We embrace individual uniqueness, as well as a culture of belonging that supports equity initiatives, leverages the educational and institutional benefits of inclusion in society, and provides opportunities for engagement intended to help all members of the community thrive. We value belonging as a core strength and an essential element of the university’s teaching, research, and service mission.Federal Contractors Labor Law Poster
PA State Labor Law Poster
Penn State Policies
Copyright Information
Hotlines
APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS:
CURRENT PENN STATE EMPLOYEE (faculty, staff, technical service, or student), please login to Workday to complete the internal application process . Please do not apply here, apply internally through Workday.
CURRENT PENN STATE STUDENT (not employed previously at the university) and seeking employment with Penn State, please login to Workday to complete the student application process. Please do not apply here, apply internally through Workday.
If you are NOT a current employee or student, please click “Apply” and complete the application process for external applicants .
Approval of remote and hybrid work is not guaranteed regardless of work location. For additional information on remote work at Penn State, see Notice to Out of State Applicants .
POSITION SPECIFICS
The Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS) at Penn State seeks a Resea rch Computing Engineer to join our technical team. This role supports Penn State’s resea rch mission by designing, operating , automating, and optimizing the GPU and AI and computing infrastructure used by resea rchers across the university , along with the high-performance computing systems that support it.
This position will be filled at the Research Computing Systems Engineer - Intermediate Professional level.
Candidates must be U.S. citizens due to specific access requirements associated with this position.
This position is ideal for an engineer who enjoys building reliable, scalable systems for machine learning, data-intensive research, and advanced computing workloads. The successful candidate will work across GPU systems, HPC platforms, storage, networking, automation, and user-facing research workflows to enable cutting-edge research in AI, simulation, and computational science.
Work Arrangement : This is a full-time position, which will report to the Research HPC Manager and requires on-site work at University Park and is not supportive of remote work .
As part of a collaborative engineering team, you’ll contribute across a broad range of responsibilities including:
Collaborate with teammates, users, and vendor support to diagnose issues and implement solutions across compute , storage, networking, and software environments.
Monitor, maintain , automate, and improve AI and HPC systems and supporting infrastructure.
D esign, deploy, operate , troubleshoot, and optimize systems using DevOps and infrastructure-as-code practices.
Support GPU-accelerated computing environments for AI, machine learning, and scientific workloads.
Partner with researchers and ICDS staff to understand workload requirements and develop practical engineering solutions for system configuration, performance, and research workflows.
Support security, logging, documentation, and compliance process for the systems we operate , including environments subject to federal research security.
Contribute to planning, requirements gathering, process improvement, and operational readiness for new services and infrastructure.
Provide timely updates to system documentation and respond to user questions with clear, actionable guidance.
Evaluate and improve tools, platforms, and workflows that support AI model development, training, inference, and data movement at scale.
Required qualifications and skills include the following:
Ability to work effectively in a Linux environment, including command-line tools, file editing, POSIX permissions, and system configuration.
Strong scripting ability in Bash and Python.
Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to debug complex systems.
Ability to work collaboratively as part of a technical team.
Experience using AI tools or AI agents to improve programming, debugging, development, or prototyping workflows.
Clear written and verbal communication skills .
Preferred qualifications:
Experience with one or more of the following is helpful but not required .
AI and HPC Workloads
Administration of multi-GPU nodes a t scale , including driver and firmware lifecycle management, NVLink / NVSwitch topology validation, GPU health monitoring and tuning for multi-GPU or multi-node GPU workloads.
Experience supporting AI/ML infrastructure, including environments used for model training, inference, experiment workflows, and large-scale data processing.
Experience with job schedulers such as Slurm , PBS, HTCondor , or LSF.
Software development experience and familiarity with HPC programming environments such as C/C++, Fortran, CUDA, MPI, or OpenMP.
Infrastructure and Automation
DevOps experience, including Git-based workflows, CI/CD, automation, and collaborative development practices.
Experience with system deployment tools such as xCAT , Warewulf , OpenCHAMI , OpenStack/Bifrost, or MAAS.
Experience administering or supporting Kubernetes.
Experience with virtualization and containerization technologies such as VMware, Docker, Apptainer , or Podman .
Networking and Storage
Networking experience, including EVPN, BGP, and IPv6.
Experience with high-speed interconnects such as InfiniBand, HPE Slingshot, or similar HPC fabrics.
Experience with HPC or distributed storage systems such as GPFS, Lustre , Ceph, or VAST.
Observability and Security
Monitoring and observability experience with tools such as Grafana, Graphite, Prometheus, VictoriaMetrics , or InfluxDB .
Experience with databases such as MySQL/MariaDB or PostgreSQL.
Security experience including identity and access management, single sign-on, and LDAP/Active Directory.
Background and Process
Familiarity with Agile project development.
Prior experience in academic research computing, research data infrastructure, or large-scale shared computing environments.
Application Instructions: To receive full consideration for the position, applications should include:
- A cover letter expressing the candidate’s interest in the role
- A current Curriculum Vitae (CV) or Resume
Why ICDS
At ICDS, you’ll buil d and su pport infrastruct u re that enables advanced research in artificial intelligence, machine learning, simulation, data science, and computationally intensive discovery. You’ll work on clusters, storage and GPU systems Penn State researchers rely on for AI, machine learning and computational research . You won’t own a narrow slice of that. Our engineers work across provisioning, scheduling, storage, networking , GPU infrastructure and user-facing tooling. You 'll debug problems from a user ’s job submission all the way down to drivers and system fir mware , and you’ll learn a lot on the way.
You'll also b e close to the science . You ’ll talk to the people running the workloads, understand what they’re trying to accomplish , and engineer systems around actual researc h needs rather than requirements handed down from somewhere else . It’s a collaborative team, and the problems are rarely the same twice .
MINIMUM EDUCATION, WORK EXPERIENCE & REQUIRED CERTIFICATIONS
Bachelor's Degree
1+ years of relevant experience; or an equivalent combination of education and experience accepted
Required Certifications:
NoneBACKGROUND CHECKS/CLEARANCES
Employment with the University will require successful completion of background check(s) in accordance with University policies.Penn State does not sponsor or take over sponsorship of a staff employment Visa. Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S.
SALARY & BENEFITS
The salary range for this position, including all possible grades, is $81,312.00 - $122,016.00.Salary Structure - Information on Penn State's salary structure
Penn State provides a competitive benefits package for full-time employees designed to support both personal and professional well-being. In addition to comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, employees enjoy robust retirement plans and substantial paid time off which includes holidays, vacation and sick time. One of the standout benefits is the generous 75% tuition discount, available to employees as well as eligible spouses and children. For more detailed information, please visit our Benefits Page .
CAMPUS SECURITY CRIME STATISTICS
Pursuant to the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act and the Pennsylvania Act of 1988, Penn State publishes a combined Annual Security and Annual Fire Safety Report (ASR). The ASR includes crime statistics and institutional policies concerning campus security, such as those concerning alcohol and drug use, crime prevention, the reporting of crimes, sexual assault, and other matters. The ASR is available for review here .
EEO IS THE LAW
Penn State is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to providing employment opportunities to all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status. If you are unable to use our online application process due to an impairment or disability, please contact 814-865-1473.
Penn State is committed to and accountable for advancing equity, respect, and belonging. We embrace individual uniqueness, as well as a culture of belonging that supports equity initiatives, leverages the educational and institutional benefits of inclusion in society, and provides opportunities for engagement intended to help all members of the community thrive. We value belonging as a core strength and an essential element of the university’s teaching, research, and service mission.Federal Contractors Labor Law Poster
PA State Labor Law Poster
Penn State Policies
Copyright Information
Hotlines
See All 19 AI Researcher Jobs in Pennsylvania
Find roles in Pennsylvania that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find AI Researcher JobsAI Researcher Jobs by City in Pennsylvania
Where Pennsylvania roles are concentrated, by current openings.
AI Researcher Job Market in Pennsylvania
A snapshot from current Pennsylvania openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
Top Industries Hiring
- Education
- Technology & Software
What Pennsylvania Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in AI researcher jobs across Pennsylvania.
- Master's or doctoral degree in computer science, machine learning, or a closely related field
- Demonstrated research experience through published papers, theses, or applied industry projects
- Proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow
- Experience designing and running controlled experiments and interpreting statistical results
- Familiarity with large-scale data pipelines, cloud compute environments, and model deployment
- Strong written and verbal communication skills for presenting findings to technical and non-technical stakeholders
AI Researcher Jobs in Pennsylvania: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become a ai researcher in Pennsylvania?
Becoming an ai researcher in Pennsylvania typically requires a master's or doctoral degree in computer science, artificial intelligence, or a related quantitative field, as the role carries no state-issued license or registration. Most Pennsylvania employers want candidates who have published research, contributed to open-source projects, or completed graduate-level research assistantships. Philadelphia-area universities and Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh are common pipelines, and many Pennsylvania employers recruit directly from their graduate programs.
How much do AI researchers make in Pennsylvania?
AI researchers in Pennsylvania earn a median of about $130,300 a year, based on May 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data, ranging from around $83,330 for the lowest 10% to over $175,480 for the top 10%. Pay rises with experience, specialty, and employer.
Which companies hire ai researchers in Pennsylvania?
Employers hiring ai researchers in Pennsylvania right now include Carnegie Mellon University, Fujitsu, and Duolingo, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of September 2026. Pennsylvania's concentration of major health systems, defense contractors, and financial services firms means demand is spread across both for-profit corporations and large academic medical centers.
Which Pennsylvania cities have the most ai researcher jobs?
Pittsburgh, University Park, and Erie have the most ai researcher openings in Pennsylvania. Philadelphia leads because of its dense cluster of health systems, fintech firms, and university research centers, while Pittsburgh draws heavily from Carnegie Mellon University's AI ecosystem and the defense and robotics companies that have grown around it.
Are there remote ai researcher jobs in Pennsylvania?
Yes, and more than most fields. About 29% of ai researcher openings tied to Pennsylvania are remote or hybrid as of September 2026, reflecting how much of the work involves writing code, running experiments, and analyzing data rather than being physically on-site. Roles focused on pure modeling and literature research tend to offer the most location flexibility.
How can I get hired as a ai researcher in Pennsylvania with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path is a research assistant or associate scientist role, which large Pennsylvania employers such as Penn Medicine, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and defense contractors like Leidos use to bring in candidates fresh from graduate programs. Building a public portfolio of documented projects on GitHub, contributing to open-source AI libraries, and completing a thesis or capstone in a focused sub-area like NLP or computer vision gives candidates a clear edge when applying to these associate-level positions.
Where can I find and apply to ai researcher jobs in Pennsylvania?
You can find and apply to ai researcher jobs in Pennsylvania on Migrate Mate, which lists current Pennsylvania openings across employers and seniority levels. Find the roles that fit your background and apply directly from each listing.
See All 19 AI Researcher Jobs in Pennsylvania
Find roles in Pennsylvania that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
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