Research Scientist, AI for Graphics and Gaming - New College Grad 2026

NVIDIA · Semiconductors · Santa Clara, CA

Research Scientist role focused on Generative AI for Graphics and Gaming, involving research, training, and prototyping of AI models for real-time graphics, world models, LLM-powered game experiences, and AI-driven characters. The role emphasizes step-change research and collaboration with product, driver, and hardware teams to ship features.

What you'd actually do

  1. Research and develop AI models that improve real-time graphics quality, robustness, performance, and latency, and enable new interactive experiences such as world models, LLM-driven gameplay, and AI-driven characters.
  2. Design and run large-scale pre-training and post-training for foundation models for graphics and gaming, using NVIDIA’s GPU infrastructure for experimentation and iteration.
  3. Build and own data pipelines and datasets for foundation models and large-scale training, spanning synthetic data, in-engine captures, and real-world content.
  4. Develop and prototype models for real-time image, video, and 3D content generation in modern game engines and graphics frameworks, and create demos that clearly showcase player-visible benefits.
  5. Stay current on AI and graphics research and work with product, driver, hardware, engine, and platform teams to turn promising ideas into shipping, user-visible features.

Skills

Required

  • PyTorch
  • deep learning experience in image/video generation, graphics, computer vision, or related fields
  • solid understanding of core DL fundamentals
  • Hands-on experience training large models on multi-GPU clusters
  • building robust distributed training pipelines
  • debugging at scale

Nice to have

  • familiarity with GPU architecture
  • CUDA abstractions
  • efficiency techniques (e.g., distillation, pruning, low-precision training/inference)
  • Background in graphics—such as rendering pipelines or game engines
  • experience with generative models, neural rendering, or reconstruction

What the JD emphasized

  • Pursuing PhD in Computer Science/Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
  • Proven track record of impactful research and shipped ideas (e.g., leading publications, production features, or widely used tools)

Other signals

  • research and develop AI models
  • train advanced models
  • prototype in real-time engines
  • work with product, driver, and hardware teams to bring your ideas to market