Data Scientist I

ABOUT THE ROLE
Our team is responsible for the development of algorithms that help
power our Audience Targeting with the ultimate goal of helping
thousands of customers run effective advertising campaigns. Many of our
problems involve deep learning algorithms to train and develop inference
at scale. Some of the challenges include the parsing of noisy labels and
data, working with large output spaces (thousands of labels), and
unreliable ground truth.
Data scientists on our team work closely with engineering throughout the
lifecycle of the product, from ideation to productionalization and monitoring.
Our data scientists are end-to-end owners. You will participate actively in all
aspects of designing, researching, building, and delivering data-focused
products for our clients.
We are a team built on a foundation of generosity and openness, and we
expect our data scientists to help make others better and raise the bar for
those around them. As a Data Scientist, you will contribute meaningfully
through leading others.
WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR
* You have a sustained track record of making significant, self-directed
end-to-end contributions to complex multi-layered
impactful machine learning projects.
* You think beyond just the task at hand to deeply understand the 'why'
behind what you are doing and anticipate problems that may be
several degrees removed from obvious requirements.
* You make your team better by proactively advocating for and driving
improvements not just to what the team produces, but also the ways in
which the team works.
* You have a strong sense of data intuition. At our scale, many off-the-
shelf modeling techniques (open source and enterprise) simply don't
work. You are able to work from first principles to develop solutions
and adapt them to a unique environment.
* You are a broadly skilled data scientist with deep expertise working
with embedded models in always-on production systems and working
across a variety of technologies and data sources.
* You have a product-focused mindset. You have the passion and ability
to contribute to the process of discovering what will delight our clients
and push forward one of the world's largest and most influential
industries toward a vision of openness, transparency, and evidence-
based decision-making.
* You work with confidence and without ego. Our data scientists have
deep knowledge and exercise a high degree of leadership in their daily
work. You have strongly-held, defensible ideas, and advocate for what
you believe is right. You are also adept at identifying
and evaluating trade-offs, willing to be proven wrong, and quick to
support your fellow teammates.
* You value, seek out, and foster diversity. We are a global team from
many diverse backgrounds, with different experiences and
perspectives. To complement this team, you will welcome ideas that
are different from your own and be skilled at finding and building from
common ground.
* You are a creative thinker, not bound by "the way things have always
been done." What you know is less important than how well you learn
and innovate. We don't need data scientists who know all the answers;
we need data scientists who can invent the answers no one has
thought of yet, to the questions yet to be asked.
* You have an abundance of intellectual curiosity and are enthusiastic to
learn (and teach) new technologies/techniques.
* You are comfortable working on an agile, distributed team spanning
multiple time zones and continents.
* You are able to communicate effectively across both technical and
non-technical audiences.
WHAT YOU BRING TO THE TABLE
We do not expect you to know every technology we use when you start at
TTD. What we care most about is that you can learn quickly and solve
complex problems using the best tools for the job. However, we find that the
most successful candidates typically come in with something like the
following experience:
* BS/MS with 4+ years or a PhD with 2+ years of experience working in a
DS or ML role that involves bringing products from ideation to
production.
* Experience in deep learning, TensorFlow/PyTorch preferred.
* The ability to communicate with diverse stakeholders, making
architecture recommendations, ensuring effective execution, and
measuring quality of outcomes.
* Experience running heavy workloads on a distributed computing
cluster (especially EMR or Databricks), leveraging technologies like
Spark to work with large datasets preferred.
* Proficient in at least two of: R, Python, Java, or Scala. Expert at one of
those. Strong SQL skills.
* Proficient in software engineering concepts like containerization and
version control preferred.