Senior Data Scientist, Machine Learning

About BuzzFeed, Inc.

BuzzFeed, Inc. (Nasdaq: BZFD) is home to the best of the internet with a mission to spread joy and truth. Across entertainment, news, food, pop culture, and commerce, our brands drive conversation and inspire what audiences watch, read, and buy now — and into the future. Born on the internet in 2006, BuzzFeed, Inc. is committed to improving it: providing trusted, quality, brand-safe entertainment to hundreds of millions of people; making content on the internet more inclusive, empathetic, and creative; and inspiring our audience to live better lives. 

Business Area: Technology

Job Category: Data

Salary: $142,000.00- $160,000.00 USD 

Union Status: Non-Union   

BuzzFeed Inc. is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. We reserve the ability to adjust the final compensation for this role based on the final candidate's experience, skillset, certifications, and geography.

The Role

BuzzFeed has been on the cutting edge leveraging technology and ML to guide and scale its business since day one. Today we ingest close to 2TB of data every day across our brands -- BuzzFeed, Tasty, HuffPost -- and platforms -- websites, apps, Apple News, TikTok, Facebook, and many more. Hundreds of millions of users consume and engage with our content, which, increasingly, is touched in some manner by Machine Learning.

We’re looking for a talented, full-time, Senior Data Scientist or Senior ML Scientist to join our distributed remote-friendly team. In this role, you will shape homegrown products, including deep learning & reinforcement learning-based recommender systems, and Gen-AI-enabled experiences. You will have a lot of freedom to identify the right approach while closely collaborating with team members and cross-functional stakeholders.

BuzzFeed’s Machine Learning team is made up of data scientists, engineers, and product managers designing and building the models and infrastructure that power a growing number of BuzzFeed Inc. surfaces. These range from internal tools used by journalists and editors to experiences that readers engage with daily as they consume content across websites and apps. You’ll get to collaborate with some of the best in the business, work closely with creative teams, and launch innovative capabilities powered by LLMs and generative models. Recent examples of the team’s work include Tasty’s AI cooking assistant and this AI Shrek generator that you never knew you needed. Additionally, you’ll design, implement, and launch personalized recommender systems that are seen by millions of readers every day across the internet.

You Will

• You will code in Python, Tensorflow, Keras, SQL, and maybe Go leveraging industry-leading ML development tools built on top of Google Vertex AI and AWS SageMaker
• You will conduct comprehensive studies of BuzzFeed’s current approach to Recommender Systems to identify opportunities gaps, and identify areas of ML investment
• You will partner with senior engineering and data leadership to strategize and develop ML architectures and ML product roadmaps
• You will partner with ML scientists, ML engineers, Product Managers, and Product Engineers to iteratively implement the architecture and execute the team roadmap
• You will share learnings and recommendations with team members
• You will stay up to date with industry trends and ML-based techniques

You Have

• You love designing and building algorithmic solutions to challenging business problems
• You’re excited to leverage recent advances in AI for both text and visual media
• You have 4+ years of experience as a data scientist, launching data products that leverage ML approaches to increase business value
• You would like to build personalized recommender systems in a high data velocity internet consumer scale
• You are interested in architecting, researching, and deploying ML/DL systems in production environments
• You enjoy the scientific processes of experimentation design, offline/online evaluation, and experimentation error analysis
• You are entrepreneurial, inventive, and pragmatic

If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at applicationhelp@buzzfeed.com. Requests received for non-disability related issues, such as following up on an application, will not receive a response.

Life at BuzzFeed, Inc.

We celebrate inclusion and are committed to equal-opportunity employment. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, and will not be discriminated against based on age, race, gender, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability, or any other protected category.

You can expect:

• A supportive, inclusive atmosphere on a team that values your contributions.
• Opportunities for personal and professional growth through work experience, offerings from our in-house Learning Team, our Employee Resource Groups, and more.
• An attractive and equitable compensation package, including salary.
• A well-rounded benefits program featuring paid time off, unlimited sick time, comprehensive medical benefits, a family leave policy, access to mental health platforms, retirement plans, health and wellness discounts, and much more.

Note: BuzzFeed Inc. offers remote/flexible work (unless specified to be required to be in-person) and is open to hiring remote candidates who are residents in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, HI, IL, IN, KY, MA, MD, MI, MS, MT, NC, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OH, OR, PA, TX, VA, WA, and WV. For non-sales roles, we can also hire in AK, AR, AZ, ID, KS, MO, ND, SC, and VT.