Research Scientist, User Modeling & Personalization

at  Snapchat

Snap Inc
is a technology company. We believe the camera presents the greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate. Snap contributes to human progress by empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together. The Company’s three core products are
Snapchat
, a visual messaging app that enhances your relationships with friends, family, and the world;
Lens Studio
, an augmented reality platform that powers AR across Snapchat and other services; and its AR glasses,
Spectacles
.
Snap Research
serves as an innovation engine for the company. Our projects range from solutions to hard technical problems that significantly enhance Snap’s existing products, to riskier explorations that can lead to fundamental paradigm shifts in the way people communicate and express themselves. The team consists of scientists and engineers who experiment with and invent new technology that has a lasting impact on Snap’s products. We also frequently publish our work at top conferences and journals in computer science and related fields.
We are looking for a Research Scientist to join our User Modeling and Personalization Research Team! Our mission is to invent new ways to model user behavior, and empower our business partners to build world-class user-centric ML systems which shape personalized experiences across Snap. Our work spans the domains of structured data modeling, recommendation systems, and large-scale machine learning. Together with you, we seek to redefine the state-of-the-art in technology to deliver our users customized experiences which delight them.

What you’ll do:

• Lead and support research projects in the user modeling and personalization domains
• Build scalable research prototypes and evaluate them in large-scale user modeling scenarios
• Publish your findings at top conferences
• Partner with engineering teams to deliver your technology to millions of Snapchatters

Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities:

• Strong technical knowledge of state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms for personalization
• Demonstrated ability in defining, leading and executing challenging research projects
• Strong computer science fundamentals, problem-solving and engineering skills
• Proven ability to mentor interns, students and junior researchers

Minimum Qualifications:

• PhD in a related technical field such as computer science, statistics, mathematics, machine learning, or equivalent years of experience
• Track record of publications in top-tier international machine learning, data mining or information retrieval venues (e.g. KDD, WSDM, SIGIR, RecSys, ACL, ICLR, NeurIPS, etc.)
• Experience working with machine learning libraries such as PyTorch, Tensorflow or related frameworks
• Experience with large-scale machine learning in an academic or industrial research lab, or equivalent open-source experience

Preferred Qualifications:

• Demonstrated ability to transform cutting-edge research into tangible product improvements
• Specialization and hands-on experience with state-of-the-art recommendation models and scalable machine learning technologies
• Familiarity with language models and generative recommendation and retrieval
• Experience with distributed data processing and machine learning frameworks on Enterprise Cloud solutions like Google Cloud, AWS, and/or Azure

“Default Together” Policy at Snap: At Snap Inc. we believe that being together in person helps us build our culture faster, reinforce our values, and serve our community, customers and partners better through dynamic collaboration. To reflect this, we practice a “default together” approach and expect our team members to work in an office 4+ days per week.
At Snap, we believe that having a team of diverse backgrounds and voices working together will enable us to create innovative products that improve the way people live and communicate. Snap is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and committed to providing employment opportunities regardless of race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other protected classification, in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws. EOE, including disability/vets. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please don’t be shy and contact us at
accommodations-ext@snap.com
.
Our Benefits
: Snap Inc. is its own community, so we’ve got your back! We do our best to make sure you and your loved ones have everything you need to be happy and healthy, on your own terms. Our benefits are built around your needs and include paid parental leave, comprehensive medical coverage, emotional and mental health support programs, and compensation packages that let you share in Snap’s long-term success!
Compensation
In the United States, work locations are assigned a pay zone which determines the salary range for the position. The successful candidate’s starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions. These pay zones may be modified in the future.
Zone A (CA, WA, NYC)
:
The base salary range for this position is $168,000-$252,000 annually.
Zone B
:
The base salary range for this position is $160,000-$239,000 annually.
Zone C
:
The base salary range for this position is $143,000-$214,000 annually.
This position is eligible for equity in the form of RSUs.

• Lead and support research projects in the user modeling and personalization domains
• Build scalable research prototypes and evaluate them in large-scale user modeling scenarios
• Publish your findings at top conferences
• Partner with engineering teams to deliver your technology to millions of Snapchatter