Director of ML Research

Cognitiv leverages deep learning artificial intelligence to build custom algorithms that more accurately and efficiently predict consumer purchase behavior. Each marketer has a unique set of goals, which is why Cognitiv created NeuralMind, a deep learning platform capable of automatically building custom algorithms that simultaneously consider the user, the context, the message, and the campaign objectives. We combine deterministic data and advanced processing techniques to continuously train these algorithms as they optimize our clients’ key performance indicators (KPIs), predicting consumer behavior in order to autonomously drive full-funnel marketing performance at scale.

The Director of Machine Learning Research will be based in Berkeley, CA and will lead a team of research scientists working on developing techniques for modeling complex sequential behavioral datasets using methods such as recurrent networks, transformers, and reinforcement learning. The Director will be responsible for overseeing the complete modeling lifecycle, including problem framing, dataset construction, objective function and architecture definition, model training, visualization, and results analysis.
The position will have a hybrid work schedule of 3 days in the office (Mon/Tue/Wed) and 2 days remote (Thursday/Friday) and is the same across all business units/office locations.

Core Responsibilities

• Lead and manage a team of research scientists to achieve team objectives and individual career goals.
• Grow the team by interviewing and hiring new talent as required.
• Define, prioritize, and execute Cognitiv’s research roadmap based on input from stakeholders, including Applied Science, Engineering, and Client Science.
• Oversee the complete modeling lifecycle including (but not limited to) framing the problem, constructing the dataset, defining the objective function and architectures, training the model, visualizing, and analyzing results.
• Present results both internally and externally through clear and compelling presentations and summaries.
• Keep up-to-date with academic and industry machine learning literature related to Cognitiv's products, particularly large language models, foundation models, and sequential modeling.

Requirements

• PhD related to Machine Learning with 5+ years industry experience
• Experience leading ML-related Research & Development team in an industry setting.
• Extensive experience modeling complex problems and comparing alternative solutions, trade-offs, and diverse points of view to determine a path forward.
• Experience working with large datasets in a cloud environment (e.g. AWS)
• Exceptional written and verbal communication and organizational skills.
• Research and software engineer experience demonstrated via grants, fellowships, patents, internship, work experience, papers and/or coding competitions.
• Desire to work at a fast-paced start-up.

Preferred Qualifications

• Expert in Python programming
• Expert in SQL programming
• Expert in PyTorch
• Expert in applying scientific method and designing experiments
• 5+ years experience working in AdTech data
• Experience with training and/or fine-tuning large Transformer models.
• Experience with natural language modeling and/or sequential datasets

Salary

• Salary: $220,000-$260,000 Base Salary + Equity

Cognitiv has been revolutionizing the ad tech space for the last 7 years as the only programmatic buying platform to leverage Deep Learning in real-time. We have seen explosive growth and are looking for talented people who are looking to affect change in a rapidly growing organization and industry to join the team
Cognitiv is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state, or local law.