Thumbtack is the one app you need to take care of and improve your home — from personalized guidance to AI tools and a best-in-class hiring experience. Every day in every county of the U.S., people turn to Thumbtack to complete urgent repairs, seasonal maintenance and bigger improvements. We help homeowners know which projects to do, when to do them and who to hire from our growing community of 300,000 local service businesses. If making an impact inspires you, join us. Imagine what we’ll build together.
About the Applied Science Team
The Applied Science team for Trust and Safety plays a critical role in maintaining a healthy and secure marketplace by leveraging ML to detect and prevent fraudulent activities and policy violations. Our work directly contributes to improving the platform experience for both customers and professionals by ensuring high-quality connections and safeguards. We oversee a variety of problems spanning machine learning, statistics, computer science and more specifically, detecting and preventing fraud to improve marketplace trust and safety.
The challenge
Our team is at the forefront of a massive amount of user data related to interactions and activities on the Thumbtack platform. We need to think a lot about scaling our detection capabilities as well as how to provide robust security and trust for a wide set of users and scenarios. We are constantly working to improve our ability to identify and mitigate risks such as fraudulent accounts, spam messaging, and payment fraud, ensuring a safe and reliable experience for both sides of our Home Services marketplace.
To this end, we are looking for someone with deep expertise in developing and deploying advanced machine learning (ML) models, including frontier AI and LLM models, to analyze various aspects of user and pro behavior, platform interactions and payment data to proactively address potential threats.
What you'll do
- Initiate and drive applied science initiatives to completion with a focus on improving the trust and safety of the Thumbtack platform. This includes identifying opportunities to leverage machine learning to enhance spam and fraud detection, policy enforcement, and overall platform security.
- Architect and deploy machine learning systems to production
- Design and execute experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of new models and strategies for improving trust and safety metrics such as reducing exposure to spam, detecting abuse and improving lead quality.
- Analyze a wide variety of data: structured and unstructured, observational and experimental
- Collaborate with engineering, product, and operations teams to define problems, develop solutions, and ensure the successful implementation and monitoring of machine learning models for Trust & Safety.
- Maintain the right balance between speed of execution and scientific rigor when designing solutions
- Contribute to improving the overall performance of Trust & Safety models by exploring new features, algorithms, and data sources.
In order to be successful, you must bring
- Expert knowledge of machine learning techniques, including classification, anomaly detection, and natural language processing (NLP).
- Ability to effectively read, write, and debug code in programming languages such as Python
- Good knowledge of probability and statistics, including experimental design, optimization, and causal inference
- Demonstrated ability to create and drive technical and impactful roadmaps for the business, and lead seamless execution
- Ability to break down complex problems rigorously and understand the tradeoffs necessary to deliver impactful projects
- Ability to communicate clearly and effectively to cross functional partners of various technical levels
#LI-Remote
Thumbtack embraces diversity. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and do not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, color, age, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, marital status, military or veteran status, genetic information, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, provincial, state, or local law. We also will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, consistent with applicable law.
Thumbtack is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities. If you would like to request a reasonable accommodation for a medical condition or disability during any part of the application process, please contact: [email protected].
If you are a California resident, please review information regarding your rights under California privacy laws contained in Thumbtack’s Privacy policy available at https://www.thumbtack.com/privacy/ .
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What the Team is Saying
What We Do
We’re Thumbtack, a technology company helping millions of people confidently care for and improve their homes. Our homeowners get personalized guidance on what to do and when to do it as well as who to hire from our growing community of 300,000 local service businesses. Every day in every county of the U.S., people turn to Thumbtack to complete small fixes, routine maintenance, and major improvements. With 12 million 5-star projects and counting, we help homeowners and home professionals accomplish more.
Why Work With Us
Bringing the $600 billion+ home services industry online, Thumbtack is a technology leader creating a new era of home care.
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