Senior Applied Machine Learning Scientist

We’re on a mission to deliver riveting storytelling for all of America. At The Washington Post, you’ll help reinvent news. Our work is driven by a deep investigative spirit and enhanced by innovation to bring audiences closer to the stories that matter most.

The Washington Post is powered by the passion and talent of our people. It takes all of us to reinvent news. Beyond our award-winning Newsroom and Opinions teams, we work across many departments, including Brand & Events, Communications, Customer Care, Engineering & Product, Finance, Human Resources, Legal, Marketing & Advertising, Print Operations, and Sales.

The Washington Post Personalization team is looking for a senior applied machine learning scientist who is excited to create forward-thinking solutions for the next generation of journalism. You will lead the research, design, and implementation of cutting-edge machine learning models that drive significant business impact and enhance reader experience. Our team is at the heart of the Post’s machine learning strategies to build intelligent and adaptable personalized news experiences and business solutions capable of powering the most high-scale websites in the world.

Motivation

• You value world-class journalism and are eager to immerse yourself in features and projects that support that mission.

• You are a technically savvy critical thinker who enjoys problem-solving.

• You receive feedback enthusiastically and thrive in a collaborative environment.

• You are eager to evolve and grow your skill-set by learning and sharing the latest machine learning technologies.

Responsibilities

• Implement and tune state-of-the-art machine learning models to deliver highly personalized content recommendations to users to optimize engagement, starting from problem definition and data exploration to model deployment, monitoring, and iteration 

• Have a keen problem-solving ability and a strong foundation in statistical analysis

• Design and execute robust online experiments to evaluate model performance and measure true causal impact on key business metrics.  

• Deploy ML models under the constraints of scalability, correctness, and maintainability.

• Collaborate with agile and cross-functional teams of machine learning scientists, software engineers, data engineers, and Product to develop impactful machine learning solutions 

• Analyze large and complex data sets to derive valuable insights and inform features and product development

• Have a proven ability to communicate with the business and know business needs, and align our machine learning products with our business goals.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or related field

• 3 year+ machine learning and data science experience

• 3 year+ professional experience with Python

Preferred  Qualifications

• 2 year+ experience with AWS

• 3 year+ experience with supervised and unsupervised learning, deep learning, and causal inference 

• Hands-on experience designing, building, and deploying recommender systems at scale

• Masters/Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or related field

• ackground in Economics, Finance, or related fields

Wherever you are in your life or career, The Washington Post offers comprehensive and inclusive benefits for every step of your journey:

• Competitive medical, dental and vision coverage

• Company-paid pension and 401(k) match

• Three weeks of vacation and up to three weeks of paid sick leave

• Nine paid holidays and two personal days

• 20 weeks paid parental leave for any new parent

• Robust mental health resources

• Backup care and caregiver concierge services

• Gender affirming services

• Pet insurance

• Free Post digital subscription

• Leadership and career development programs

Benefits may vary based on the job, full-time or part-time schedule, location, and collectively bargained status.

The salary range for this position is:

The actual salary within this range will depend on individual skills, experience, and qualifications as they relate to specific job requirements. This position may be eligible for a bonus or incentive program, and a member of the Talent Acquisition team will discuss bonus payment terms and conditions during the interview process.