Research Scientist Visa Sponsorship Jobs in California
California is one of the most active states for research scientist visa sponsorship, driven by major employers across biotech, tech, and academia. Companies like Genentech, Apple, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, plus university systems spanning the Bay Area, San Diego, and Los Angeles, regularly hire international research scientists and file H-1B petitions.
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Get Access To All JobsLocation:
San Jose
Team:
Technology
Employment Type:
Regular
Job Code:
A194643
About the Team
Join ByteDance’s AI Agent Memory Infrastructure team, where we build the core memory systems that power next-generation intelligent agents. Our focus is on creating a unified platform for long-term, conversational, and task-oriented memory, enabling more personalized and context-aware AI experiences.
We design and operate large-scale, low-latency, and highly reliable memory infrastructure, covering the full lifecycle from storage and retrieval to updating and optimization. Working at the intersection of LLMs, data systems, and context engineering, we tackle challenges in memory representation, retrieval, and multimodal fusion.
Partnering closely with model and product teams, we turn advanced research into scalable production systems that support a wide range of AI-driven applications.
We are looking for talented individuals to join our team in 2026. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth. Launch your career where inspiration is infinite at ByteDance.
Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by end of year 2026. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and evolve the next-generation memory infrastructure for AI agents, developing a unified platform that supports long-term memory, conversational memory, and task-oriented memory.
- Architect and optimize memory system pipelines for large-scale, low-latency, and high-availability environments, including data ingestion, storage, indexing, retrieval, updating, compression, and forgetting mechanisms to support real-time inference and personalized interactions.
- Explore key challenges at the intersection of large language models, context engineering, and data management, including memory representation, retrieval and ranking, conflict resolution, summarization and fusion, and memory lifecycle management.
- Design unified memory models and processing workflows for multimodal data (text, image, audio, behavioral signals), enhancing agents’ long-term consistency, personalization, and task completion in complex scenarios.
- Collaborate closely with model, application, and platform teams to productionize memory capabilities, and continuously optimize system performance across quality, latency, cost, reliability, and safety.
- Stay up-to-date with cutting-edge advancements and contribute to the long-term technical roadmap of AI agent memory systems, driving innovation and capability evolution.
Minimum Qualifications
- Individuals who are completing or have recently completed a PhD degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, or related fields.
- Strong experience in distributed systems, databases, information retrieval systems, or AI infrastructure, with proven system design and production engineering capabilities.
- Proficient in at least one programming language such as Go, Python, or C++, with strong coding standards and engineering best practices.
- Solid understanding of core technologies in LLM applications, including but not limited to embeddings, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), context engineering, retrieval systems, and long-term state management.
- Familiarity with one or more key areas in memory systems: memory extraction and representation, vector/graph indexing, retrieval and ranking, memory updating, compression and forgetting, multimodal memory fusion.
- Ability to analyze and optimize trade-offs across system performance, latency, cost, and scalability from both system and algorithm perspectives; experience with complex production systems is highly preferred.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in agent memory systems, user profiling, recommendation/search feature platforms, or knowledge base systems.
- Contributions to or deep understanding of open-source memory frameworks such as mem0, memOS, memU, or similar solutions.
- Strong track record in databases, information retrieval, machine learning, or AI systems, including publications, impactful open-source work, or notable technical achievements.
- Experience in multimodal data processing, online inference systems, personalized agents, or long-term user state modeling.
Compensation Description (Annually)
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $156000 - $387600 annually.
Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.
Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).
The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.
For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:
Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:
- Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
- Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
- Exercising sound judgment.
About us
Founded in 2012, ByteDance's mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. With a suite of more than a dozen products, including TikTok, Lemon8, CapCut and Pico as well as platforms specific to the China market, including Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua, ByteDance has made it easier and more fun for people to connect with, consume, and create content.
Why Join ByteDance
Inspiring creativity is at the core of ByteDance's mission. Our innovative products are built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and enrich life - a mission we work towards every day.
As ByteDancers, we strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our Company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.
Diversity & Inclusion
ByteDance is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At ByteDance, our mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.
Reasonable Accommodation
ByteDance is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at https://tinyurl.com/RA-request
Location:
San Jose
Team:
Technology
Employment Type:
Regular
Job Code:
A194643
About the Team
Join ByteDance’s AI Agent Memory Infrastructure team, where we build the core memory systems that power next-generation intelligent agents. Our focus is on creating a unified platform for long-term, conversational, and task-oriented memory, enabling more personalized and context-aware AI experiences.
We design and operate large-scale, low-latency, and highly reliable memory infrastructure, covering the full lifecycle from storage and retrieval to updating and optimization. Working at the intersection of LLMs, data systems, and context engineering, we tackle challenges in memory representation, retrieval, and multimodal fusion.
Partnering closely with model and product teams, we turn advanced research into scalable production systems that support a wide range of AI-driven applications.
We are looking for talented individuals to join our team in 2026. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth. Launch your career where inspiration is infinite at ByteDance.
Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by end of year 2026. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and evolve the next-generation memory infrastructure for AI agents, developing a unified platform that supports long-term memory, conversational memory, and task-oriented memory.
- Architect and optimize memory system pipelines for large-scale, low-latency, and high-availability environments, including data ingestion, storage, indexing, retrieval, updating, compression, and forgetting mechanisms to support real-time inference and personalized interactions.
- Explore key challenges at the intersection of large language models, context engineering, and data management, including memory representation, retrieval and ranking, conflict resolution, summarization and fusion, and memory lifecycle management.
- Design unified memory models and processing workflows for multimodal data (text, image, audio, behavioral signals), enhancing agents’ long-term consistency, personalization, and task completion in complex scenarios.
- Collaborate closely with model, application, and platform teams to productionize memory capabilities, and continuously optimize system performance across quality, latency, cost, reliability, and safety.
- Stay up-to-date with cutting-edge advancements and contribute to the long-term technical roadmap of AI agent memory systems, driving innovation and capability evolution.
Minimum Qualifications
- Individuals who are completing or have recently completed a PhD degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, or related fields.
- Strong experience in distributed systems, databases, information retrieval systems, or AI infrastructure, with proven system design and production engineering capabilities.
- Proficient in at least one programming language such as Go, Python, or C++, with strong coding standards and engineering best practices.
- Solid understanding of core technologies in LLM applications, including but not limited to embeddings, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), context engineering, retrieval systems, and long-term state management.
- Familiarity with one or more key areas in memory systems: memory extraction and representation, vector/graph indexing, retrieval and ranking, memory updating, compression and forgetting, multimodal memory fusion.
- Ability to analyze and optimize trade-offs across system performance, latency, cost, and scalability from both system and algorithm perspectives; experience with complex production systems is highly preferred.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in agent memory systems, user profiling, recommendation/search feature platforms, or knowledge base systems.
- Contributions to or deep understanding of open-source memory frameworks such as mem0, memOS, memU, or similar solutions.
- Strong track record in databases, information retrieval, machine learning, or AI systems, including publications, impactful open-source work, or notable technical achievements.
- Experience in multimodal data processing, online inference systems, personalized agents, or long-term user state modeling.
Compensation Description (Annually)
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $156000 - $387600 annually.
Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.
Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).
The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.
For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:
Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:
- Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
- Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
- Exercising sound judgment.
About us
Founded in 2012, ByteDance's mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. With a suite of more than a dozen products, including TikTok, Lemon8, CapCut and Pico as well as platforms specific to the China market, including Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua, ByteDance has made it easier and more fun for people to connect with, consume, and create content.
Why Join ByteDance
Inspiring creativity is at the core of ByteDance's mission. Our innovative products are built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and enrich life - a mission we work towards every day.
As ByteDancers, we strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our Company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.
Diversity & Inclusion
ByteDance is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At ByteDance, our mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.
Reasonable Accommodation
ByteDance is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at https://tinyurl.com/RA-request
Research Scientist Job Roles in California
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Search Research Scientist Jobs in CaliforniaResearch Scientist Jobs in California: Frequently Asked Questions
Which companies sponsor visas for research scientists in California?
California's biotech and tech sectors produce some of the highest volumes of research scientist H-1B sponsorships in the country. Frequent sponsors include Genentech, Gilead Sciences, Amgen, Apple, Google, Meta, and national laboratories like Lawrence Berkeley and SLAC. University of California campuses across Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco also sponsor research scientists through academic and postdoctoral appointments.
Which visa types are most common for research scientist roles in California?
The H-1B is the most common visa for research scientists in California, as most roles require at least a bachelor's degree in a specialized scientific field, satisfying the specialty occupation requirement. Candidates with exceptional records may qualify for the O-1A. Those pursuing permanent residence often enter the EB-1B (outstanding researcher) or EB-2 NIW pathways, which are well-suited to research-focused careers.
Which cities in California have the most research scientist sponsorship jobs?
The San Francisco Bay Area, including South San Francisco and San Jose, leads in biotech and tech research scientist hiring. San Diego is a major life sciences hub anchored by companies like Illumina and Sorrento Therapeutics. Los Angeles has a growing presence through UCLA, USC, and biotechnology firms. Sacramento hosts state-funded research institutions that also sponsor international scientists.
How to find research scientist visa sponsorship jobs in California?
Migrate Mate filters job listings specifically by visa sponsorship availability, making it straightforward to browse research scientist roles in California without sifting through positions that don't sponsor. You can search by location, role type, and industry to find openings at biotech firms, national labs, and university research departments across the Bay Area, San Diego, and Los Angeles.
Are there any California-specific considerations for research scientists seeking visa sponsorship?
California's high concentration of H-1B-dependent employers in tech and biotech means some companies must meet additional attestation requirements under Department of Labor rules. Research scientists at UC campuses may access cap-exempt H-1B filings, which are not subject to the annual lottery, making those positions particularly accessible for international candidates outside the regular cap season.
What is the prevailing wage for sponsored research scientist jobs in California?
U.S. employers sponsoring a visa must pay at least the prevailing wage, which is what workers in the same role, area, and experience level typically earn. The Department of Labor sets this rate to make sure companies aren't hiring foreign workers simply because they'd accept lower pay than a U.S. worker. It varies by job title, location, and experience. You can look up current prevailing wage rates for any occupation and location using the OFLC Wage Search page.
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