Senior Director, Research

Join the leader in entertainment innovation and help us design the future. At Dolby, science meets art, and high tech means more than computer code. As a member of the Dolby team, you'll see and hear the results of your work everywhere, from movie theaters to smartphones. We continue to revolutionize how people create, deliver, and enjoy entertainment worldwide. To do that, we need the absolute best talent. We're big enough to give you all the resources you need, and small enough so you can make a real difference and earn recognition for your work. We offer a collegial culture, challenging projects, and excellent compensation and benefits, not to mention a Flex Work approach that is truly flexible to support where, when, and how you do your best work.

The Bangalore Research Centre was established in mid-2023, and we are now looking for a local, highly experienced Research Leader to manage and grow the team, which is comprised of multimodal AI, data platform and computer vision researchers, all working on highly relevant, cutting-edge technologies. 

This newly created position, which will report into the Head of the Advanced Technology Group "ATG" and will work with senior leaders globally, will be a visionary leader, spearheading the efforts of Bangalore ATG and continuing to build out the centre, identified as a key Dolby Growth Hub. 

Not only will you be a strong, dynamic leader, currently working in the AI, CV and date spaces, you will also be a talent attractor, and have a proven track record of hiring, growing and mentoring both individuals and teams of highly talented PhD researchers. 

What you'll do: 

• Build and lead a world-class Research Centre in Bangalore.  
• Directly manage 3 divisional heads, each with a team of highly talented PhD researchers who invent and develop the next generation of AI based multimodal image, audio, and speech technologies.  
• Partner with ATG leadership globally in attracting, mentoring, and nurturing research talent in a wide variety of areas. 
• Initiate new research projects by nurturing and influencing bottom-up ideas of the researchers, as well as developing new personal areas of interest aligned with ATG goals. 
• Partner with ATG leadership in assembling diverse teams that span across regions, labs, and domain to deliver on research priorities. 
• Participate in global ATG leadership initiatives towards developing key priorities and overall global research portfolio. 
• Build strong relationships with faculty at key universities in India with close research collaboration, and creating a funnel of interns. 
• As a member of Bangalore's senior leadership team, play a broader role in driving positive employee engagement and retention as well as act as an ambassador for Bangalore, internally and externally. 
• Develop & maintain a dynamic, flexible, transparent, results-oriented and innovative working atmosphere. 

 Education and desired experience: 

• Ph.D. with 15+ years of corporate research experience in Physics, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science, or related fields.
• Demonstrated ability to attract top talent and grow research teams in India 
• Expertise in Research Leadership for Computer Vision and AI, with a deep theoretical and practical understanding of state-of-the-art technologies. 
• Proficiency in key AI/ML domains, including:
  • Diffusion, autoregressive, and generative models.
  • Self-supervised and contrastive learning, auto-encoders.
  • Multimodal architectures and algorithms.
  • Applications in audio, image, and text processing 
  • Image analysis, enhancement, compression, and processing technologies.
• Track record of leading high-performing research teams applying AI and Computer Vision to multimodal challenges, integrating audio and video technologies.
• Inspiring communicator with the ability to set the vision for the research teams, align research with industry trends, and lead transformation and innovation.
• Proven success in driving innovation, from research to productization, in an industrial R&D setting.
• Strong publication record in top-tier conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, CVPR, ICCV, AAAI, ICASSP, WACV).
• Proven leadership in managing and mentoring elite research teams, ensuring business impact and revenue growth.
• Global collaboration experience, effectively working across diverse teams and regions.

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