The Role
As a Research Scientist in Personalization, you'll improve Spotify's personalization experiences using machine learning and generative AI, collaborating with interdisciplinary teams and publishing research to enhance search and recommendation systems.
Summary Generated by Built In
Spotify has more than 600M listeners in more than 180 markets around the world, who use our music, podcast, and audiobook services to find what delights, entertains, educates, and informs them. Personalization is a high impact organization that provides the technology to serve them what they expect to find, to help them explore and find new things to enjoy, and to suggest things they might not be aware of that they would like.
We are looking for a Research Scientist with a machine learning background to help us improve personalization experiences. You will join a team of researchers whose focus is on enhancing the Spotify experience by researching, developing, and integrating state-of-the-art generative AI technologies into our search and recommender systems, and unlock new interactive experiences.
You will be part of an interdisciplinary team focusing on ensuring that the foundations of Spotify technologies are at or above the state of the art and, in the process, redefine the state of the art for the field and contributing to the wider research community by publishing papers. Our team has strong ties internally to product groups as well as externally to the research community.
Areas of expertise: Information Retrieval, Recommendation System, Language Technologies, Foundational Models, Generative AI Technologies, and Machine Learning
What You'll Do
- Participate in groundbreaking research in artificial intelligence with a focus on large-scale generative applications to search and recommendation systems
- Apply your scientific knowledge to analyze and collect data, identify problems, construct methodologies, including metrics and standard processes, conduct experiments, and devise scalable solutions through hands-on prototyping and development
- Work on practical applications such as search, recommendation, language understanding in the music and talk audio domains
- Collaborate with other scientists, engineers, product managers, designers, and data analysts across Spotify to design and develop innovative solutions to challenging problems
- Impact Spotify products, while working on and iterating further a long-term research roadmap
- Maintain a research profile through external engagement by publishing scientific papers, coordinating workshops, giving talks, and being an active community member at top conferences
Who You Are
- You have a PhD in either information retrieval, intelligent systems, machine learning, computer science, or related areas
- You have expertise in domains such as language technologies, generative AI technologies, information retrieval, and recommender systems
- You have peer-reviewed publications at journals or conferences such as RecSys, TheWebConf, WSDM, SIGIR, EMNLP, ACL, COLM, ICML, ICLR, NeurIPS, or related
- You have solid hands-on skills in sourcing, cleaning, manipulating, analyzing, visualizing, and modeling of large scale real data
- You are passionate about making sense of user behavior, music content, and talk audio content using best available methods
- You are a creative problem-solver who is passionate about digging into complex problems and devising new approaches to reach results
Where You'll Be
- This role is based in London or Stockholm
- We offer you the flexibility to work where you work best! There will be some in person meetings, but still allows for flexibility to work from home
Spotify is an equal opportunity employer. You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what’s playing in your headphones. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all thrive, contribute, and be forward-thinking! So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It’s in our differences that we will find the power to keep revolutionizing the way the world listens.
At Spotify, we are passionate about inclusivity and making sure our entire recruitment process is accessible to everyone. We have ways to request reasonable accommodations during the interview process and help assist in what you need. If you need accommodations at any stage of the application or interview process, please let us know - we’re here to support you in any way we can.
Skills Required
- PhD in information retrieval, intelligent systems, machine learning, computer science, or related areas
- Expertise in language technologies, generative AI technologies, information retrieval, and recommender systems
- Peer-reviewed publications at top journals or conferences
- Hands-on skills in managing large scale real data
- Passionate about analyzing user behavior and audio content
- Creative problem-solver with a passion for complex challenges
Spotify Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Spotify and has not been reviewed or approved by Spotify.
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Flexible Benefits — Employees consistently praise the total compensation package beyond base salary, highlighting a mix of RSUs, cash incentives, and stipends alongside core pay. The package is described as flexible and customizable through equity choices (e.g., RSUs, options, cash) that can be tailored for long-term wealth building.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time-off offerings are repeatedly highlighted as substantial, including generous vacation, paid sick days, volunteer time, and flexible holidays. These policies are framed as a meaningful part of the overall rewards experience beyond salary.
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Healthcare Strength — Health coverage is portrayed as comprehensive, spanning medical, dental, vision, life insurance, disability coverage, and mental health support. Additional employer contributions to HSAs are cited as strengthening the overall health and wellness value proposition.
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The Company
What We Do
Spotify transformed music listening forever when it launched in Sweden in 2008. Discover, manage and share over 50m tracks for free, or upgrade to Spotify Premium to access exclusive features including offline mode, improved sound quality, and an ad-free music listening experience.
