About this Applied Scientist, Data Science role at Prior Labs
Who we are
Foundation models transformed text and images. Structured data - the largest and most consequential data format in the world - stayed untouched. Tables run every clinical trial, every financial model, every scientific experiment, every business decision, and no one had built a foundation model that truly understood them.
Until now. What LLMs did for language, we're doing for tables. The next modality shift in AI is happening, and we're hiring the team that makes it.
Momentum. We pioneered tabular foundation models and are now the world-leading organization in structured-data ML. Our TabPFN v2 model was published as a Nature cover story and set a new state of the art for tabular machine learning. Since release we've scaled model capabilities 20x+, passed 3.5M+ downloads and 7,500+ GitHub stars, and are seeing accelerating adoption across research and industry - from detecting lung disease with Oxford Cancer Analytics to preventing train failures with Hitachi to improving clinical-trial decisions with BostonGene.
The hardest work is ahead. We're scaling tabular foundation models to millions of rows, thousands of features, real-time inference, and entirely new data modalities, while building the infrastructure to run them in production across some of the most demanding industries on earth. These are open problems no one else is working on at this level.
Our team. We're a small, highly selective team of 30+ engineers, researchers, and GTM specialists, with backgrounds spanning Google, Apple, Amazon, DeepMind, Meta, Microsoft Research, G-Research, Jane Street, Goldman Sachs, and CERN. We're led by Frank Hutter, Noah Hollmann, and Sauraj Gambhir, and advised by world-leading AI researchers including Bernhard Schölkopf and Turing Award winner Yann LeCun. We ship fast, do top-tier research, and hold each other to an extremely high bar.
What's next. In 2025 we raised €9m pre-seed led by Balderton Capital, backed by leaders from Hugging Face, DeepMind, and Black Forest Labs. The next phase of growth is here, which makes this an ideal time to join.
About The Role
You'll join our data science team working with an entirely new class of AI models. As a Data Scientist at Prior Labs, you'll be the critical link between our foundation models and real-world applications — experimenting hands-on with our tabular foundation models (including TabPFN) to uncover new applications, working directly with customers to show how native tabular AI solves problems traditional methods can't, and translating what you learn back into our product roadmap.
How You'll Drive Impact:
Applied Data Science & Experimentation: Identify high-impact use cases for TFMs and build proof-of-concepts that showcase their advantages over traditional ML. Develop best-practice workflows using capabilities like in-context learning (ICL) and benchmark rigorously against existing approaches.
Customer Success: Work directly with users to understand their challenges and demonstrate TFM value through technical demos tied to real business objectives. Guide onboarding to deliver quick wins and translate user feedback into technical insights for our product team.
Community & Education: Design and deliver workshops, tutorials, and content that explains the tabular foundation model paradigm — how it differs from LLMs and traditional ML, and why it matters. Engage the data science community through Kaggle, GitHub, and public-facing work.
What We're Looking For:
PhD or Master's in a quantitative field, plus 3+ years of experience building and deploying ML/AI in industry, competitive ML, or open-source.
Deep proficiency in Python and the data science ecosystem, with hands-on experience training and deploying deep learning models in PyTorch, including modern deep learning - architectures (especially transformers)
Collaborative development on GitHub and strong software engineering practices
Ability to translate complex technical concepts into tangible value for both technical and non-technical audiences
Genuine curiosity about new model architectures and a drive to explore what they can do
Nice to Have:
Kaggle Grandmaster, Master, or Expert status
Experience in technical consulting, solutions engineering, MLOps, or developer advocacy
Contributions to open-source libraries or data science tooling
A portfolio of blog posts, talks, or projects that demonstrate strong technical communication
Life at Prior Labs
We're a small, ambitious team solving one of the hardest problems in AI, and we're just getting started. You'll work closely with world-class researchers and builders who care deeply about the quality of their craft, the impact of their work, and the people they work with.
We move fast, we think rigorously, and we take the time to do things right. If you're excited by hard problems, motivated by real-world impact, and want to be part of building something that matters, we'd love to hear from you.
We're building our teams in Berlin, Freiburg, and New York and we believe that when you're working on something as hard and exciting as TabPFN, being in the same room matters. Most of our roles are based in one of our offices but great people come from everywhere, and in exceptional cases we're open to remote. This usually involves frequent travel to one of our offices and the whole company comes together regularly for offsites to think, build, and celebrate together.
Our Commitments
We believe the best products and teams come from a wide range of perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds. That's why we welcome applications from people of all identities and walks of life, especially anyone who's ever felt discouraged by "not checking every box."
We're committed to creating a safe, inclusive environment and providing equal opportunities regardless of gender, sexual orientation, origin, disability, or any other trait that makes you who you are.
We care about how your data is handled. Read our Recruiting Privacy Notice to see exactly what we collect, why, and how long we keep it.