VP of Research (AI & Code Intelligence)

About Swimm

Swimm is revolutionizing how enterprise organizations modernize and maintain their legacy codebases by helping them understand their existing code. Dealing with challenges at the forefront of code and application understanding, our platform leverages a mix of static code analysis and GenAI to provide deep insights, enabling organizations to reduce risk, streamline development processes, and minimize time to market for large enterprises in financial, health and other highly regulated and high stakes industries.

Role Overview

We are looking for a VP of Research to lead Swimm’s research vision and execution across GenAI and code analysis. This role owns the bridge between long-term research and productized, customer-impacting capabilities.

You will define what’s possible, validate what’s useful, and help turn research into shippable product advantages.

This is a hands-on leadership role.

Responsibilities

Research Strategy & Vision

Define and own Swimm’s research roadmap aligned with product and company strategy.
Maintain a continuous, hands-on awareness of rapidly evolving LLM capabilities in order to identify existing and emerging breakthroughs that can meaningfully advance Swimm’s platform:
Code understanding & representation
LLM-assisted documentation & reasoning
Legacy code analysis (Java, COBOL, SQL, .NET, other Mainframe languages)
Human-in-the-loop tribal knowledge capture
Balance short-term wins with long-term differentiation.

Applied AI & Code Intelligence

Lead research in:

Static code analysis
Semantic code models
Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) for large codebases
Evaluation frameworks for “understanding” (not just accuracy)
Own experimentation and validation methodologies.
Translate research insights into clear product primitives.

Working with the Product Team

Turn research prototypes into production features.
Define MVP scope vs research scope.
Ensure scalability, reliability, and enterprise readiness.

Team Leadership

Build and lead a small, elite research team (AI engineers, researchers).
Set standards for research quality, rigor, and velocity.
Mentor researchers to think in customer impact, not just models.

External Leadership

Represent Swimm in the AI & developer tooling ecosystem.
Drive collaborations, publications, and thought leadership where valuable.
Track and evaluate academic and industry research trends

Requirements:

Required

8+ years in applied research, AI, ML, or code analysis.
Proven experience turning research into real, shipped products.
Deep understanding of:
LLMs and their limitations
Code as data (ASTs, CFGs, IRs, embeddings)
Evaluation challenges in AI systems
Strong communication skills — can explain complex ideas to engineers, PMs, and execs.
Comfortable working in ambiguity and early-stage constraints.

Strong Plus

Experience with enterprise or legacy codebases.
Experience working with (or leading) R&D in a startup.
Publications or patents in relevant domains (nice to have, not required).