Senior Machine Learning Scientist - Search

Company Description

Depop is the community-powered circular fashion marketplace where anyone can buy, sell and discover desirable secondhand fashion. With a community of over 35 million users, Depop is on a mission to make fashion circular, redefining fashion consumption. Founded in 2011, the company is headquartered in London, with offices in New York and Manchester, and in 2021 became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Etsy. Find out more at www.depop.com 

Our mission is to make fashion circular and to create an inclusive environment where everyone is welcome, no matter who they are or where they’re from. Just as our platform connects people globally, we believe our workplace should reflect the diversity of the communities we serve. We thrive on the power of different perspectives and experiences, knowing they drive innovation and bring us closer to our users. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer, providing employment opportunities without regard to age, ethnicity, religion or belief, gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy or maternity, marriage and civil partnership, or any other protected status. We’re continuously evolving our recruitment processes to ensure fairness and are open to accommodating any needs you might have.

If, due to a disability, you need adjustments to complete the application, please let us know by sending an email with your name, the role to which you would like to apply, and the type of support you need to complete the application to adjustments@depop.com. For any other non-disability related questions, please reach out to our Talent Partners.

Job Description

Depop is looking for a versatile Senior Machine Learning Scientist to join our Search & Ranking team in the UK. As part of the team you will work alongside a Product Manager, Backend Engineers and other ML Scientists playing a key role in building innovative models to power Depop’s search engine and ranking across the app.

Responsibilities:

You will:

• Research, design and deliver ML solutions to take on problems within the search & discovery space:

  • Learning-to-rank models

  • Vector search & embedding models

  • etc.

• Understand requirements from various partners across the business, designing machine learning solutions to address business problems, such as:

  • How can we surface relevant results for this search?

  • How can we show users personalised results in real time?

  • What is the right price for this user?

• Set up and conduct large-scale experiments to test hypotheses and drive product development

• Keep up to date with pioneering research, contribute to Machine Learning groups, and apply new techniques for NLP, image processing, etc.

• Participate in team ceremonies (follow the agile cadence, technical whiteboarding sessions, product road mapping, etc)

Qualifications

Skills and experience

• Significant experience (3+ years) working as a Data Scientist, with a track record of delivering models to solve industry-scale problem

• Experience with experiment design and conducting A/B tests

• Proficiency in Python, with the ability to write production-grade code and a good understanding of data engineering & MLOps

• Solid understanding of machine learning concepts, familiarity working with common frameworks such as sci-kit-learn, TensorFlow, or PyTorch

• Collaborative and humble great teammate with an ability to work wimulti-functionalnal teams, including technical and non-technical stakeholders

• Passion for learning new skills and staying up-to-date with ML algorithms

Bonus points

• Experience with Databricks and PySpark

• Experience with deep learning & large language models

• Experience with traditional, semantic, and hybrid search frameworks (e.g. Elasticsearch)

• Experience working with AWS or another cloud platform (GCP/Azure)

Additional Information

Health + Mental Wellbeing

• PMI and cash plan healthcare access with Bupa

• Subsidised counselling and coaching with Self Space

• Cycle to Work scheme with options from Evans or the Green Commute Initiative

• Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for 24/7 confidential support

• Mental Health First Aiders across the business for support and signposting

Work/Life Balance:

• 25 days annual leave with option to carry over up to 5 days

• 1 company-wide day off per quarter

• Impact hours: Up to 2 days additional paid leave per year for volunteering

• Fully paid 4 week sabbatical after completion of 5 years of consecutive service with Depop, to give you a chance to recharge or do something you love.

• Flexible Working: MyMode hybrid-working model with Flex, Office Based, and Remote options *role dependant

• All offices are dog-friendly

• Ability to work abroad for 4 weeks per year in UK tax treaty countries

Family Life:

• 18 weeks of paid parental leave for full-time regular employees

• IVF leave, shared parental leave, and paid emergency parent/carer leave

Learn + Grow:

• Budgets for conferences, learning subscriptions, and more

• Mentorship and programmes to upskill employees

Your Future:

• Life Insurance (financial compensation of 3x your salary)

• Pension matching up to 6% of qualifying earnings

Depop Extras:

• Employees enjoy free shipping on their Depop sales within the UK.

• Special milestones are celebrated with gifts and rewards!