Probably the wrong fit if the industry experience isn't right, in which case they would be on a fast-track to a senior dev role in the non machine-learning part of our company.
You're right about "research", although I'd hesitate to use the word hardcore hah. We get tons of candidates with ~2 years of slightly relevant work, but rarely do we get candidates with the exactly right relevant work. The "qualified" candidates I spoke of have ~4 years of slightly relevant work, but there are only a couple of them, and they're either out of our hiring budget or currently working for our team.