Senior Applied Scientist II, Retrieval Sciences

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, Depop, or Elo7 you'll tackle unique, meaningful, and large-scale problems alongside passionate coworkers, all the while making a rewarding impact and Keeping Commerce Human.

Job Description

What’s the role?

Etsy is hiring a Senior Applied Scientist in the Retrieval Sciences team. We develop efficient, state-of-the-art, large-scale search models that sift through a universe of nearly a hundred million special, extraordinary items to help Etsy buyers find something they will love.

As a Senior Applied Scientist, you will set the scientific direction to improve the search experience of our buyers. Working hands-on with your collaborators, you will deliver robust production models that will be A/B tested live on Etsy.com! Does helping people find the perfect handmade or vintage good from using the latest ML research sound exciting to you? If so, we could be the perfect match.

This is a full-time position reporting to the Senior Engineering Manager for Retrieval Sciences and the base salary range will be 184,000 - 205,000 USD per year. 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 who are either remote, flex, or office-based. Etsy offers different work modes to meet the variety of needs and preferences of our team. Learn more about our flexible work options and vaccination policy here.

What’s this team like at Etsy?

At Retrieval Sciences, we build retrieval systems that power multiple applications in Etsy, including search at etsy.com. We apply the latest techniques from ML, NLP, and IR research at Etsy’s scale, including:

• Distributed, highly efficient inverted indexes written in Rust, incorporating the latest optimization research in sparse retrieval.

• Graph models based on collaborative filtering that learn from billions of previous interactions between our buyers and sellers. 

• Deep neural dense retrieval models powered by Transformers and fast approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search.

What does the day-to-day look like?

Our team of applied scientists, ML engineers, data analysts, and product managers work as a multi-functional team in a primarily remote setting. In our team, you will:

• Find opportunities to improve our buyers’ search experience and propose a project plan with a clear hypothesis.

• Create data ETL pipelines for new features.

• Iterate quickly to design, implement, optimize, and test new modeling improvements in both offline and production A/B experiment settings.

• Learn from experiments results and share your findings.

• Lead high code quality and engineering standards in the team, identifying and leading improvements.

• Follow the latest research in ML, create state-of-the-art models for retrieval, and disseminate your knowledge throughout Etsy for the benefit of our teammates, and share it outside of Etsy in conferences and other venues.

• 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.

Qualifications

Qualities that will help you thrive in this role are:

You are a caring teammate who enjoys helping others. Your growth mindset means you find joy in continuous learning and self-improvement. You care about how ML impacts real people. It also helps if you have: 

• A previous track record of publications in one of the following fields: information retrieval, recommendation systems, knowledge graphs, natural language processing.

• 2+ years experience writing high quality production code, demonstrating strong software engineering and coding skills. 

• Proficiency in neural ML frameworks such as Tensorflow, PyTorch, Jax, Keras.

• Experience with large-scale data ETL frameworks and ML workflow frameworks such as Apache Spark, Beam, Airflow, Kubeflow Pipelines etc.

• Proficiency in Python, Scala, and/or other equivalent languages. Rust (our graph engine is written in Rust!)

• A product focus and passion for using machine learning to tackle real-world problems.

• Effective written communication and comfort working in a remote team with a strong Slack and Google Docs culture.

• Graph neural networks (GNNs) in a search and/or recommendation systems context

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 and is an affirmative action employer. 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.

For U.S. roles only:

Many Etsy roles are open to remote candidates, and you'll be able to identify which ones within the location header of each job description. We're open to remote hires from all U.S. states except Hawaii and Alaska.