Principal Applied Scientist

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Lead and Define AI Strategy – Set the vision for applied ML research and AI-driven decision-making across Viant’s products and services.
• Drive High-Impact Research – Conduct advanced research in NLP, RL, LLMs, and deep learning, publishing in top-tier conferences while applying findings to real-world production systems.
• Architect and Deploy ML at Scale – Develop, optimize, and deploy high-throughput, low-latency ML models, collaborating with engineers to bring solutions into production.
• Innovate in Generative AI & Causal ML – Explore novel AI techniques, such as LLMs, reinforcement learning, and causal inference, to enhance targeting, personalization, and attribution models.
• Experimentation and Validation – Design, run, and analyze A/B experiments to test ML-driven strategies, ensuring data-driven decision-making.
• Mentor and Influence – Provide technical leadership for a team of applied scientists and ML engineers, fostering a culture of innovation and excellence.

• Experience: 7+ years of experience building and deploying machine learning models at scale.
• Technical Leadership: Demonstrated ability to lead complex, high-ambiguity ML projects from research to production.
• Academic & Industry Recognition: Masters + At least two peer-reviewed publications in deep learning, NLP, or a related AI domain or a PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or a related quantitative field.
• Deep Expertise in ML & AI: Strong foundation in deep learning, NLP, generative AI, and causal inference.
• Programming & Frameworks: Proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch, LangChain, Llama Index).
• Scalability & Cloud: Experience with distributed computing, cloud ML platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), and real-time AI inference.

• Industry Impact: Publications at top-tier ML/NLP conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, AAAI).
• Ad Tech Expertise: Experience in digital advertising, real-time bidding, or audience modeling.
• Generative AI Applications: Hands-on experience with LLMs and multimodal AI applications.
• Optimization & Personalization: Strong background in reinforcement learning, dynamic pricing, or recommendation systems.

Investing in our employee’s professional growth is important to us, but so is investing in their well-being. That’s why Viant was voted one of the best places to work and some of our favorite employee benefits include fully paid health insurance, paid parental leave and unlimited PTO and more. 

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