Tableau Research is an industrial research team focused on helping people see and understand data. We actively work to be a source of new and inspiring product and technology directions, generating ideas that influence, drive, or significantly change what Tableau delivers to customers. We are also active members of the academic community, where we regularly publish and participate in top-tier conferences and journals. We operate as a world-class research lab where we partner with internal teams and academia to champion innovation and advance the state of the art in data and analytics.

We are looking for research scientists specializing in AI, although prior experience at an industry research lab or a startup is definitely a plus! An ideal candidate has deep technical experience in AI domains relevant to Tableau, such as:

• Applied ML/AI techniques to support visual analytics and human-in-the-loop systems.
• NLP for search and content retrieval, as well as for question and answering systems, with a strong emphasis on large language models (LLMs) and generative AI-based technologies.
• Semantic enrichment techniques, such as sentiment analysis, entity classification, and topic modeling to enrich the semantics of datasets to better support visual analytics.
• HCI techniques such as mixed-initiative systems, large displays, mobile, augmented- and mixed- reality to support data exploration enhanced by AI with multimodal interaction.

Primary Responsibilities
Design and lead research projects and activities that align with Tableau’s mission. These projects include exploring new AI methods to help people collect, explore, interact with, analyze, visualize, and derive actionable insights from data.

Validate and communicate research innovations to the rest of Tableau/Salesforce through prototypes, peer-reviewed publications, whitepapers, and presentations.

Collaborate with other research scientists, developers, and product managers to ensure research results drive product impact.

Understand Tableau/Salesforce products, customers, and business goals to further innovation in future products and services.

Engage with external research and technical communities to hone expertise, provide thought leadership, and establish relationships

Qualifications

• PhD in a technical domain relevant to AI in Tableau Research.

• Proficient with the relevant AI technical skills necessary to implement research ideas as working prototypes using programming tools such as Python, TensorFlow, PyTorch, and other AI frameworks.

• Experience with large language models (LLMs) and GPT-based technologies, including fine-tuning, deployment, and application to real-world problems.

• Experience pitching research ideas and/or leading a group of people toward a common goal.

• Enthusiasm for Tableau’s mission as a focus for your AI research agenda.

• Experience publishing research results at major conferences or in journals, such as NeurIPS, ICML, ACL, EMNLP, IEEE VIS, Eurovis, SIGCHI, UIST, IUI, KDD.