AI R&D Scientist

Who we are Alef Education began with a bold idea: that every learner deserves a personalised and meaningful education experience. What started in 2016 as a small pilot programme in Abu Dhabi has evolved into one of the world’s most dynamic EdTech companies—reshaping how millions of students engage with learning across the globe. Today, Alef is proudly headquartered in the UAE, working hand-in-hand with ministries of education, schools, and teachers to bring smart, data-powered platforms into classrooms in over 14,000 schools. Supporting over 1.1 million students and 50,000 teachers across the UAE, Indonesia & Morocco our AI-driven platforms generate 16+ million data points every day, helping drive smarter learning decisions. Whether it’s improving national exam results, boosting classroom engagement, or supporting educators with world-class tools, Alef is committed to impact at scale. In 2024, Alef made history as the first EdTech company to list on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX), cementing our role as a regional innovator with global reach. About The Role AI R&D Scientist leads the hands-on research and rapid prototyping of Generative AI solutions that enhance Alef Education’s digital-learning experiences, bridging cutting-edge academic breakthroughs with scalable, production-ready applications. Spot new ideas, run quick experiments, build working prototypes, and turn the best ones into real features for students and teachers. Key Responsibilities • Lead end-to-end R&D cycles for Gen AI features – starting from idea generation, data preparation, and model selection to testing, deployment, and monitoring in real learning environment • Stay updated on the latest Gen AI trends and technologies, regularly reviewing new research papers, tools, and open-source projects to find opportunities that can enhance Alef’s products • Work closely with product managers, engineers, product managers, data scientists, and designers to ensure prototypes align with real user needs and business goals. • Build tools and reusable components (e.g., prompt libraries, evaluation scripts, agent workflows) to speed up experimentation and make future projects easier to launch • Support innovation culture by running internal workshops, sharing findings, mentoring teammates, and documenting lessons from both successful and failed experiments • Ensure your solutions meet safety, privacy, and ethical AI standards before they are handed off for large-scale deployment. • Collect and analyse feedback from early users and pilots to improve the product and guide the next version of your models or features. To Be The Right Fit, You'll Need • Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Math, Statistics, Machine Learning, AI, or related field • Minimum 5 years in AI / ML engineering with at least 2 years hands-on Generative AI R&D • Certification(s)/Licenses: Cloud ML certifications (AWS, GCP, Azure) – nice to have • Strong experience in LLM training & fine-tuning, AI-agent development & orchestration • MLOps – end-to-end model lifecycle (nice to have) • Knowledge of data pipelines for text / multimodal corpora, coding with AI, model evaluation & responsible AI practices • Familiarity with Azure AI Services or Foundry is a strong plus • Performance optimisation (quantisation, distillation), empirical research & experimental design (A/B tests, statistical analysis) experience • Strong Python, PyTorch & FastAPI; Docker & Kubernetes (AKS); and familiarity with LLM serving/optimization frameworks (vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, llama.cpp, ONNX Runtime) is nice to see • Fluency in English and Arabic What we offer We believe our people are our greatest advantage. We value curiosity, purpose, and the drive to make a real difference. When you join Alef, you join a mission — and a team that’s just as passionate about transforming education as you are. Here’s a glimpse of what we offer: • Annual flight allowance • Annual performance bonus • Education allowance • Life insurance • Enhanced leave policy • A hybrid work model and up to 40 remote working days per year to work from anywhere (with flexibility built in) • At Alef, we don’t just imagine a better future for education.We build it — together At Alef, we don’t just imagine a better future for education. We build it — together.