ML Open Source Lead

About Ideogram

Ideogram’s mission is to make world-class design accessible to everyone, multiplying human creativity. We build proprietary generative media models and AI native creative workflows, tackling unsolved challenges in graphic design. Our team includes builders with a track record of technology breakthroughs including early research in Diffusion Models, Google’s Imagen, and Imagen Video. We care about design, taste, and craft as much as research and engineering – shipping experiences that creatives actually love.

We’ve raised nearly $100M, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures. Headquartered in Toronto with a growing team in NYC, we're scaling fast, aiming to triple over the next year. We're a flat team with a culture of high ownership, collaboration, and mentorship.

Explore Ideogram 4.0, Enterprise, API, Open Source, Character and Custom Models blog posts, and try Ideogram at ideogram.ai.

About the Role

The Senior Open-Source ML Lead serves as a strategic bridge between Ideogram's internal research teams and the broader AI ecosystem. This person will own the vision for turning foundational research into high-quality, production-grade public tooling, while building and stewarding a thriving developer community around our work.

Responsibilities

• Open-Source Strategy: Own and drive the vision for releasing open model weights, methodologies, and code, in close partnership with research and leadership.
• Community Leadership: Oversee and scale our GitHub and Hugging Face presence, setting standards for repository quality, documentation, and contributor experience.
• Advocacy & Outreach: Champion open science by building open-source demos (e.g., implementing LoRA fine-tuning for our models), publishing technical blog posts, engaging deeply with the community, and representing Ideogram at conferences and industry events.
• Ecosystem Collaboration: Build and manage relationships with model providers, internal engineers, and external contributors to advance AI accessibility and Ideogram's standing in the open-source ecosystem.
• Research-to-Release: Lead the conversion of internal, proprietary implementations into polished, reproducible open-source code, setting the bar for quality and usability across the team.
• Mentorship & Influence: Guide internal engineers and researchers on open-source best practices, and help shape Ideogram's broader open-source strategy and roadmap.

What We're Looking For

• Advanced degree (MS or PhD preferred) or equivalent extensive research experience in Machine Learning, Deep Learning, or a related field
• Proven track record of leading open-source ML projects with meaningful community adoption or impact
• Deep, hands-on expertise in Python and ML research libraries such as PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow
• Strong command of LLMs and modern deep learning architectures (e.g., Transformers, diffusion models, RLHF)
• History of publishing research and/or maintaining widely-used open-source projects in ML, computer vision, or NLP
• Established presence in the ML/open-source community (e.g., recognized contributions, talks, publications, or a strong following on relevant platforms)
• Exceptional communicator, comfortable representing the company externally and building relationships with researchers, engineers, and the broader community
• Genuine passion for open-source work and community-driven research and tooling
• Self-directed and comfortable operating with significant autonomy, quickly picking up new tools and driving initiatives from ambiguity to execution

Our Culture

We’re a team of exceptionally talented, curious builders who love solving tough problems and turning bold ideas into reality. We move fast, collaborate deeply, and operate without unnecessary hierarchy, because we believe the best ideas can come from anyone.

Everyone at Ideogram rolls up their sleeves to make our products and our customers successful. We thrive on curiosity, creativity, and shared ownership. We believe that small, dedicated teams working together with trust and purpose can move faster, think bigger, and create amazing things.

Ideogram is committed to welcoming everyone — regardless of gender identity, orientation, or expression. Our mission is to create belonging and remove barriers so everyone can create boldly.

What We Offer

• 💸Competitive compensation and equity designed to recognize the value and impact of your contributions to Ideogram’s success.
• 🌴 4 weeks of vacation to recharge and explore.
• 🩺 Comprehensive health, vision, and dental coverage starting on day one.
• 💰 RRSP/401(k) with employer match up to 4% to invest in your future from the moment you join.
• 💻 Top-of-the-line tools and tech to fuel your creativity and productivity.
• 📍 Toronto HQ perks: Steps from Union Station and the PATH, with daily in-office lunches and dinners.
• 🔍 Autonomy to explore and experiment — whether you’re testing new ideas, running large-scale experiments, or diving into research, you’ll have access to compute/resources you need when there’s a clear business or creative use case. We encourage curiosity and bold thinking.
• 🌱 A culture of learning and growth, where curiosity is encouraged and mentorship is part of the journey.