Staff Applied Scientist, Ads Search Quality

Company Description
Etsy is the global marketplace for unique and creative goods. We build, power, and evolve the tools and technologies that connect millions of entrepreneurs with millions of buyers around the world. As an Etsy Inc. employee, whether a team member of Etsy, Reverb, or Depop, you will tackle unique, meaningful, and large-scale problems alongside passionate coworkers, all the while making a rewarding impact and Keeping Commerce Human.

Salary Range:

What’s the role?

Etsy is hiring a Staff Applied Scientist to join the Ads Search Quality team. We are looking for individuals who are product and delivery-driven, and are passionate about making ML innovations in digital advertising to help improve the Etsy buyer/seller experience.

This is a fantastic opportunity for someone interested in building user-centric ML systems for a two-sided marketplace with 90+ million buyers, 5+ million sellers, and hundreds of millions of unique, handmade, vintage listings. Etsy sellers use Etsy ads for advertising their products and growing their business. Etsy Ads optimizes sellers’ budgets to advertise their listings in the places on Etsy where they perform best. The work on the Ads Search Quality team involves building machine learning systems to power the sponsored search product including retrieval, ranking, and user engagement modeling on Etsy.com and the Etsy app.

This is a full-time position reporting to the Senior Engineering Manager. In addition to salary, you will also be eligible for an equity package, an annual performance bonus, and our competitive benefits that support you and your family as part of your total rewards package at Etsy. 

For this role, we are considering candidates based in the United States. Candidates living within commutable distance of Etsy’s Brooklyn Office Hub or in the San Francisco Bay Area may be the first to be considered. For candidates within commutable distance, Etsy requires in-office attendance once or twice per week depending on your proximity to the office. Etsy offers different work modes to meet the variety of needs and preferences of our team. Learn more details about our work modes and workplace safety policies here.

What’s this team like at Etsy?

• Our team develops custom machine-learning models that can drive product vision and customer impact. 

• We ensure that the right ads are put in front of the right buyers

• We maintain a pipeline that scales for our 90+ million buyers and sellers

• We make the ad experience more personalized to a buyers journey

What does the day-to-day look like?

• Work cross functionally with product engineering teams and communicate your ideas and model capabilities to product managers

• Apply the latest advances in machine learning to improve the relevance and increase buyer ad engagement

• Prototype, optimize, and productionize large-scale ML models to improve our ads funnel

• Conduct A/B experiments to validate the efficiency of ML models and pipelines

• Work closely with product managers, ML engineers, and analytics partners to measure and improve our ads product 

• Of course, this is just a sample of the kinds of work this role will require! You should assume that your role will encompass other tasks, too, and that your job duties and responsibilities may change from time to time at Etsy's discretion, or otherwise applicable with local law

Qualities that will help you thrive in this role are:

• You have a track record of applying statistical and machine learning techniques in addressing real-world problems

• You are an expert in one of the following fields: natural language processing, information retrieval, deep learning.

• You have experience training, deploying, monitoring, debugging and iterating on production machine learning systems in search,  recommendation, and/or ads systems.

• You can successfully create requirements and lead your team from design through to delivery.

• You write understandable, testable code and you have an eye towards maintainability.

• You care about the implications of your work on end users.

Additional Information

What's Next
If you're interested in joining the team at Etsy, please share your resume with us and feel free to include a cover letter if you'd like. As we hope you've seen already, Etsy is a place that values individuality and variety. We don't want you to be like everyone else -- we want you to be like you! So tell us what you're all about.

Our Promise
At Etsy, we believe that a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace furthers relevance, resilience, and longevity. We encourage people from all backgrounds, ages, abilities, and experiences to apply. Etsy is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If, due to a disability, you need an accommodation during any part of the interview process, please let your recruiter know. While Etsy supports visa sponsorship, sponsorship opportunities may be limited to certain roles and skills.