Principal Applied Scientist

Xero is a beautiful, easy-to-use platform that helps small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping advisors grow and thrive. 
At Xero, our purpose is to make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world. This purpose sits at the centre of everything we do. We support our people to do the best work of their lives so that they can help small businesses succeed through better tools, information and connections. Because when they succeed they make a difference, and when millions of small businesses are making a difference, the world is a more beautiful place.
About The Team
The AI team at Xero brings together Applied Scientists and ML Engineers to build systems that power Xero's next generation of beautiful, insightful products.
The AI Products group exists to collaboratively build products that use AI and ML to reduce toil and deliver the right insight at the right time. Working within the Data & Science team, you will join a diverse, globally distributed team of scientists, engineers, product managers, and analysts who help Xero turn data into beautiful, insightful products.
Applied Scientists work cross-functionally with engineers, product managers, and designers to apply AI and ML to deliver seamless product experiences that save time and provide insight – allowing our customers to focus on what matters most. As a staff scientist, you'll be tasked with leading research programs that push the boundaries of what's possible with today's technology.

About The Role

• Leading the scientific aspect of cross-functional delivery of AI products, striking a balance between managing delivery risk and pushing the boundaries of what's possible with ML and AI
• Collaborating closely with ML engineers to manage the growth rate of technical debt and costs across our stack
• Making sure we're solving the right problems with the right methods
• Sharing knowledge with colleagues and lifting the bar for the AI Products team
• Working with teams across Xero to improve the quality and usability of data
• Building Xero's profile in market through public facing content and events
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About You

• You have 5+ years of experience delivering customer facing ML and AI products at scale
• You are drawn to solving hard problems
• You are comfortable reading research papers and adapting them to problem at hand
• You have first hand experience on why it's important to write high quality code from day one, not just when it's time to go to production
• Constant learning and growth are an important part of who you are

What You’ll Bring With You

• Ability to translate between the business and machine learning domains
• Sound software engineering skills in Python, Scala, or similar
• Expert level hands on practitioner skills in one or more of: time series forecasting, natural language processing, classical machine learning, deep learning
• Ability to grasp and teach the mathematical concepts that underpin the domains outlined above

Why Xero? Diversity of people brings diversity of thought, and we like that. Our human-first culture of respect, fairness, and inclusion is what helps Xeros thrive and work and beyond. Offering very generous paid leave to use however you’d like (plus statutory holidays!), dedicated paid leave to care for your physical and mental wellbeing as well as an Employee Assistance Program to access mental health care for you and your family, employee resource groups, wellbeing programming and allowances, medical, dental, vision, and disability insurance, fertility and family forming financial support, 401k contribution matching, 26 weeks of paid parental leave for primary caregivers, an Employee Share Plan, beautiful offices with snacks and break areas, flexible working, career development and many other benefits that reflect our human value, you’ll do the best work of your life at Xero.
Research has shown that women and underrepresented groups are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single competency or experience. If you are excited about this role, but your past experience doesn't align perfectly, we encourage you to apply anyway. You could be just the right person for this role and Xero. If you have any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at time of application and throughout the interview process.