Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Ads Response Prediction

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Canada.

📋 Description

• Take ownership of and drive the research and development of pCTR and conversion prediction models.

• Enhance calibration, minimize training data biases, and improve model accuracy across Instacart advertising platforms.

• Develop and apply debiasing techniques such as Mixed Negative Sampling, Inverse Propensity Weighting, counterfactual risk minimization, Platt scaling, and isotonic regression.

• Play a role in the Multi-Domain Multi-Task model architecture utilizing Mixture-of-Experts, Transformer layers, and LoRA adapters.

• Engage in sequence modeling projects, including TIGER generative retrieval and Semantic ID representation learning.

• Collaborate on Foundation Models that involve autoregressive user behavior prediction.

• Define complex modeling challenges and convert business insights into ML research pathways with well-defined evaluation criteria.

• Publish and share findings within the organization.

• Contribute via design reviews, paper dissemination, and experiment retrospectives.

⛳️ Requirements

• Master's degree or PhD in machine learning, statistics, computer science, information retrieval, or a related quantitative discipline; or equivalent experience.

• Over 3 years of combined academic and professional experience, including PhD research, applying ML to scaling ranking, recommendation, or prediction challenges.

• Profound knowledge of CTR/conversion prediction modeling techniques such as Deep & Wide, DeepFM, DCN, and multi-task learning.

• Solid grounding in causal inference, counterfactual reasoning, and the mitigation of training data biases.

• Capability to analyze selection bias, position bias, and methods for propensity-based correction.

• Expertise in Python and deep learning frameworks including PyTorch, TensorFlow, and JAX.

• Proficiency in SQL, Spark, and Pandas.

• Proven ability to turn ambiguous problems into well-defined ML research directions and achieve results through systematic experimentation.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

• Skilled at conveying complex modeling decisions to diverse stakeholders, including product managers and data scientists.

🏝️ Benefits

• Flexible work location options: home, office, or your preferred coffee shop.

• Regular in-person gatherings.

• Equity grants for new hires.

• Annual equity refresh grants.

• Competitive market compensation and benefits.