Research Staff - Centre for Immersification

As a University of Applied Learning, the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) works closely with industry in its research pursuits. This position is situated within the Centre for Immersification, dedicated to applied research in immersive technologies and bridging the gap between academia and industry. Research staff at the Centre have the opportunity to be equipped with applied research skill sets relevant to industry demands while working on innovative projects within the university.

The primary responsibility of this role is to contribute to the design, development, and deployment of an advanced content moderation framework for immersive 3D virtual environments, such as Roblox and Minecraft. The research staff will play a key role in building and integrating of AI agents into gaming scenarios (e.g., gameplay, interactions, procedural content generation, dynamic narratives), and integrating a multimodal detection pipeline, ensuring real-time performance, scalability, and deployment readiness in alignment with the project’s research objectives.

The successful candidate will work with a diverse team of faculty members, engineers, and industry partners, including renowned researchers at the College of Computing and Data Science (CCDS) at NTU. Technical skills, natural curiosity, versatility, and enthusiasm are highly desired traits that will enable success in this fast-paced environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage the research project together with Principal Investigator (PI), Co-PI and the research team members to ensure all project deliverables are met.
• Collaborate with the PI, Co-PIs and NTU team to design and develop a robust and scalable software system for autonomous agents navigating immersive 3D virtual environments (e.g., Roblox, Minecraft).
• Design and develop robust and scalable game agents to navigate and interact with immersive 3D virtual environments (e.g., Roblox, Minecraft).
• Integrate AI agents into gaming scenarios (e.g., gameplay, interactions, procedural content generation, dynamic narratives)
• Leverage fine-tuned Vision-Language Models (VLMs) for game scenario detection, supporting zero-shot reasoning and scene-graph inference.
• Ensure the system is deployment-ready by supporting benchmarking of inference speed, compute efficiency, and scalability with concurrent agents.
• Maintain high software engineering standards through rigorous testing, version control, clear documentation, and continuous improvement of development infrastructure (e.g., CI/CD, Docker, cloud-based services).
• Carry out Risk Assessment, and ensure compliance with Work, Safety and Health Regulations.
• Coordinate procurement and liaison with vendors/suppliers.
• Work independently, as well as within a team, to ensure proper operation and maintenance of equipment.

Job Requirements

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering, or a related field.
• Strong programming proficiency in Python and/or C++.
• Demonstrable experience with machine learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow).
• Hands-on experience with game AI agents and/or GUI agents such as Mineflayer, Unity ML-Agents, or similar.
• Solid expertise in computer vision techniques, transformer architectures, and multi-modal learning.
• Familiarity with reinforcement learning (RL) principles, curriculum learning strategies, and the challenges of real-time systems.
• Working knowledge of distributed systems and container technologies (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes).
• Communicate research findings and project progress effectively through demos, internal presentations, and contributions to external academic forums where appropriate.
• A genuine passion for developing AI agents for games.
• Roblox or Minecraft players are a strong advantage.

Key Competencies

• Strong software development and debugging skills.
• Demonstrable experience with machine learning frameworks.
• Proficient in technical writing and system documentation.
• Self-directed learner with strong problem-solving and research capability.