Lead Machine Learning Scientist, Advertising

The New York Times Company • New York, NY

55d • Hybrid

About The Position

The New York Times is a technology company committed to producing the world's most reliable and highest quality journalism. Our ability to do so relies on a talented team of expert technologists who help NYT learn from a tremendous abundance of data unique to this company. We are looking for a Lead Machine Learning Scientist to join the ML Science Group and lead our collaboration with The NYT's Advertising mission. You will lead a small team of ML scientists that develops, deploys, and tests ML and AI models, training on our first party data. You will be a strategic partner to our Advertising mission, proposing and planning new ML projects to enhance the advertising business. You will report to the head of ML Science, and collaborate closely with partners across the company. You will report to our Lead Machine Learning Scientist, Community. This is a hybrid role, working in our New York, NY office.

Requirements

• PhD plus 4+ years experience, or 7+ years experience, in statistics, computer science, computational social science, or another quantitative/computational discipline
• 4+ years of experience in creatively reframing business challenges as Machine Learning tasks
• 4+ years of experience with data cleaning, preparation, feature engineering, and model selection techniques
• 1+ years of experience mentoring peers or junior data scientists through pairing and algorithm, model, and code review
• 1+ years of experience coding in production environments using Python and SQL, developing and deploying complex Machine Learning models that are integrated into company process

Nice To Haves

• 1+ years of experience applying machine learning to advertising in a production environment
• Familiarity with ads user and content taxonomies
• 1+ years of experience developing with LLMs or training language, image, and/or other embedding models in production environments.
• 2+ years of experience collaborating cross-functionally with product managers and software engineers
• 2+ years of experience scoping and staging work into well-defined milestones and delivering on communicated timelines

Responsibilities

• You will reframe advertising our company goals as machine learning tasks that deliver accurate predictions, relevant insights, and optimization
• You will turn models into data products, collaborate with engineering teams, and integrate into processes throughout The Times
• You will identify novel project opportunities/capabilities that solve critical problems and act on those proposals
• You will provide technical and team leadership in machine learning projects, ensuring standards of data governance, privacy, and security, and contributing to the vision of the team
• You will scope ongoing product improvements, prioritize requests from your team
• You will build and facilitate relationships across the organization to ensure our projects' goals are met
• You will manage ML scientists and mentor them through pairing and algorithm, model, and code review
• You will demonstrate support and understanding of our value of journalistic independence and a strong commitment to our mission to seek the truth and help people understand the world.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Industry: Publishing Industries
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees