Interested in this Research Scientist role at USALCO?
Apply Now →About This Role
Usalco is a leading U.S. provider of specialty water treatment chemistries, services, and digital solutions, serving municipal, industrial, and specialty markets across North America. The company operates a nationwide manufacturing and distribution footprint with 34 strategically located facilities, including 27 manufacturing plants and 7 terminals, enabling reliable, local supply to customers across the United States. Usalco products help treat drinking water for more than 130 million people, supporting public health, regulatory compliance, and environmental sustainability.
Our Research \& Development organization is based at Usalco's flagship Baltimore Research \& Technology Center, a state‑of‑the‑art facility dedicated to advancing coagulation science, developing next‑generation water treatment solutions, and translating laboratory innovation into full‑scale commercial impact.
Position Summary
Usalco is seeking a Research Scientist to serve as a senior technical contributor within our R\&D organization. This role is ideal for an experienced industrial chemist who thrives in a lab‑based, applied research environment and has a strong track record of originating, leading, and translating research into commercialized water treatment products and process improvements.
The successful candidate will act as a technical authority in their domain, leading research projects from concept through commercialization and serving as a company‑wide resource for process optimization, troubleshooting, and advanced chemical problem solving.
The Research Scientist is expected to personally design, run, document, and interpret experiments, not merely direct work performed by others.
Reporting to: Senior Research Director
This is an individual contributor role with technical leadership responsibilities and no direct people management.
Key Responsibilities
- Originate and lead applied research programs aligned with business needs, from early‑stage concept development through laboratory validation, scale‑up support, and product launch/commercialization, with clear ownership to drive projects to achieve defined technical and business goals
- Own project execution by defining workplans, milestones, and deliverables and maintaining timeline accountability typical of an applied R\&D organization focused on practical, scalable solutions
- Personally design and execute laboratory experiments, including hands\-on bench work, data analysis, documentation, and interpretation involving organic, inorganic and aluminum\-based chemistries, with emphasis on water treatment performance, stability, and manufacturability
- Serve as a lead chemist supporting company‑wide process optimization, troubleshooting, and root‑cause analysis across manufacturing sites and customer applications
- Provide technical leadership and mentorship to junior scientists, chemists, and analysts, including experimental design guidance and data interpretation
- Translate fundamental chemistry insights into practical, scalable solutions that improve product performance, reliability, cost, or sustainability
- Collaborate cross‑functionally with Operations, Technical Service, Product Management, and Sales to support product launches, customer trials, and technical issue resolution
- Author and review technical documentation, including experimental reports, internal technical guidance, and intellectual property disclosures
- Maintain high standards for laboratory safety, data integrity, and regulatory compliance, consistent with Usalco's safety‑first culture
- Stay current with emerging regulatory drivers and industry trends (e.g., PFAS, DBPs, LCRI) relevant to water treatment chemistry
Required Qualifications
- PhD in Chemistry (or closely related field)
- Minimum 10 years of technical experience in an industrial or applied research environment
- Demonstrated ability to independently lead complex technical projects with limited supervision
- Strong experimental skills and comfort working in a hands‑on laboratory setting
- Proven record of translating research outcomes into commercial or operational impact
- Experience developing and launching products in the water treatment industry (municipal and/or industrial), including supporting customer trials and commercial readiness
- Willingness and ability to work on‑site at Usalco's Baltimore Research \& Development Center
Preferred Qualifications
- Familiarity with a formal New Product Development / Stage‑Gate process is preferred
- Deep experience with inorganic and aluminum‑based coagulant chemistries (e.g., PAC, ACH, alum, sodium aluminate); coagulant‑specific chemistry experience is a plus
- Specific experience addressing contaminants of concern in the water treatment industry (e.g., PFAS and related emerging issues) is considered a plus
- Background in inorganic process chemistry and chemical manufacturing considerations
- Experience in municipal or industrial water treatment, including coagulation, contaminant removal, or process optimization
- Familiarity with analytical techniques commonly used in water treatment R\&D (e.g., jar testing, ICP‑OES, TOC, UV‑Vis, stability studies)
- Prior experience acting as a technical expert supporting manufacturing plants or customer‑facing teams
Why Join Usalco
- Work in a modern, well‑equipped R\&D facility focused on real‑world impact
- Lead chemistry that directly supports clean water, sustainability, and public health
- Operate on a technical career ladder that values depth, expertise, and influence
- Collaborate with experienced scientists, engineers, and field experts across the organization
Competitive compensation aligned with senior‑level technical contribution
*USALCO is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law. As a general policy, USALCO does not offer employment visa sponsorships upon hire or in the future.*
Role Details
About This Role
Research Scientists push the boundaries of what AI can do. They design experiments, develop novel architectures, publish papers, and translate research breakthroughs into production capabilities. This is where the fundamental advances happen, from attention mechanisms to diffusion models to reasoning chains.
The work is intellectually demanding and often ambiguous. You might spend months on an approach that doesn't pan out. The best research scientists combine deep mathematical intuition with engineering pragmatism. They know when to go deep on theory and when to run experiments. They read papers voraciously and can spot incremental contributions from genuine breakthroughs.
Across the 3,708 AI roles we're tracking, Research Scientist positions make up 3% of the market. At USALCO, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Research Scientist roles are concentrated at major AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta FAIR) and well-funded AI startups. The competition is intense. PhD is effectively required for most positions, and publication track record matters. Compensation is among the highest in AI, reflecting both the scarcity of talent and the strategic importance of research breakthroughs.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week includes: reading and discussing recent papers with your team, designing and running experiments on multi-GPU clusters, analyzing results and iterating on hypotheses, writing up findings for internal review or publication, and collaborating with engineering teams to productionize promising results. The ratio of thinking to coding is higher than in engineering roles.
Research Scientist roles are concentrated at major AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta FAIR) and well-funded AI startups. The competition is intense. PhD is effectively required for most positions, and publication track record matters. Compensation is among the highest in AI, reflecting both the scarcity of talent and the strategic importance of research breakthroughs.
Skills in Demand for This Role
PhD strongly preferred for most roles. Deep expertise in a specific area (NLP, computer vision, reinforcement learning, multimodal) is expected. PyTorch is the standard. Publication track record matters. Strong mathematical foundations in linear algebra, probability, optimization, and information theory are assumed.
Beyond the fundamentals, companies value experience with large-scale distributed training, novel architecture design, and the ability to bridge theory and practice. Understanding of current frontier topics (reasoning, multimodal, long-context, alignment) is essential. Code quality matters more than many researchers expect. Labs want researchers who can implement their ideas cleanly.
Strong research postings specify the research area, mention the team you'd join, and describe the problems they're working on. They often list recent publications from the team. Vague 'AI research' postings without specifics usually mean the company wants to sound impressive but doesn't have a real research agenda.
Compensation Benchmarks
Research Scientist roles pay a median of $222,200 based on 197 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $200,000.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($300,000) and Research Engineer ($280,000). By seniority level: Entry: $120,000; Mid: $200,000; Senior: $230,000; Director: $272,150; VP: $250,000.
USALCO AI Hiring
USALCO has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across Research Scientist. Based in Baltimore, MD, US.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 14% (508 positions) offer remote work, while 3,180 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (1,045 roles, $220,000 median); San Francisco (810 roles, $277,088 median); Los Angeles (397 roles, $215,000 median).
Career Path
Common paths into Research Scientist roles include PhD Student, Research Engineer, Postdoc.
From here, career progression typically leads toward Research Lead, Distinguished Scientist, VP of Research.
The PhD is the entry point for most paths. Choose your advisor and research area carefully since they'll define your first industry position. Publish consistently, contribute to open-source projects in your area, and build relationships at conferences. Industry research offers better compensation and compute resources than academia, but the pressure to show product impact is real.
What to Expect in Interviews
Research interviews are multi-stage: a research talk (present your best paper), technical deep-dives on your methodology, and often a 'research proposal' exercise where you design an experiment to test a hypothesis. Coding rounds test implementation ability alongside theoretical knowledge. Be prepared to implement a paper from scratch and discuss the design choices the authors made. Strong candidates can critique papers constructively and identify gaps in experimental methodology.
When evaluating opportunities: Strong research postings specify the research area, mention the team you'd join, and describe the problems they're working on. They often list recent publications from the team. Vague 'AI research' postings without specifics usually mean the company wants to sound impressive but doesn't have a real research agenda.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 3,708 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 102 entry-level, 1,705 mid-level, 1,469 senior, and 432 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 14% of the market (508 positions). The remaining 3,180 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($300,000 median, 21 roles); Research Engineer ($280,000 median, 147 roles); AI Architect ($254,798 median, 67 roles).
Research Scientist roles are concentrated at major AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta FAIR) and well-funded AI startups. The competition is intense. PhD is effectively required for most positions, and publication track record matters. Compensation is among the highest in AI, reflecting both the scarcity of talent and the strategic importance of research breakthroughs.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 3,708 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,605), Data Scientist (310), AI Software Engineer (259). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (102) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,705) and senior (1,469) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 432 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 14% of all AI roles (508 positions), with 3,180 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $217,500. Top-quartile roles start at $272,100, and the 90th percentile reaches $325,000. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $300,000 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $140,000. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,890 postings), Aws (1,103 postings), Azure (877 postings), Rag (855 postings), Gcp (631 postings), Prompt Engineering (560 postings), Pytorch (545 postings), Claude (498 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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