Principal Applied Scientist/Machine Learning Engineer

We are Rokt, a hyper-growth ecommerce leader. We enable companies to unlock value by making each transaction relevant at the moment that matters most, when customers are buying. Together, Rokt's AI-based relevance Platform and scaled ecommerce Network powers billions of transactions. In December 2022, Rokt’s valuation increased to $2.4 billion USD, allowing us to expand rapidly across 15 countries. 

The Rokt engineering team builds best-in-class ecommerce technology that provides personalized and relevant experiences for customers globally and empowers marketers with sophisticated, AI-driven tooling to better understand consumers. Our bespoke platform handles millions of transactions per day and considers billions of data points which give engineers the opportunity to build technology at scale, collaborate across teams and gain exposure to a wide range of technology.

At Rokt, we practice transparency in career paths and compensation.

At Rokt, we believe in transparency, which is why we have a well-defined career ladder with transparent compensation and clear career paths based on competency and ability. Rokt’stars constantly strive to raise the bar, pushing the envelope of what is possible.

We are looking for a Principal Applied Scientist/Machine Learning Engineer

Compensation: $285,000-$350,000 including superannuation, employee equity plan grant & world class benefits.

As a Principal Applied Scientist / Machine Learning Engineer, you bring deep expertise in machine learning and a strong track record of driving impact. You will work closely with engineering leaders and senior stakeholders to tackle complex relevancy challenges, taking projects from research to full-scale deployment. Your work will focus on designing, developing, and deploying proprietary machine learning models that power key business initiatives.

In this role, you will lead cutting-edge ML research and production deployment of high-impact models, advancing recommender systems, conversion optimization, user experience enhancement, and multi-task learning architectures.

This is a hands-on, individual contributor role for a seasoned expert who thrives in solving complex ML problems at scale. You will design and implement advanced ML architectures, ensuring they are robust, efficient, and impactful in a fast-paced, high-performance environment.

About You:

• Develop and implement machine learning models to solve high-impact business problems.
• Design and optimize scalable ML pipelines and infrastructure for production environments.
• Conduct applied ML research, prototype new modeling approaches, and rigorously test innovations.
• Evaluate and improve model performance, ensuring robustness, scalability, and interpretability.
• Translate complex business needs into practical ML solutions, collaborating with product and engineering teams.
• Stay ahead of emerging ML trends, contributing to knowledge sharing through tech talks, brown bags, and best practice evangelism.

Requirements

About the Role:

• PhD or Master’s in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or related field with specialization in ML, AI, or Information Retrieval.
• 10+ years of industry experience building production-grade ML systems.
• Deep expertise in at least two:
• Reinforcement Learning (Bandits, Policy Optimization)
• Multi-Task Learning & Mixture of Experts (MMOE, PLE, DCN)
• Deep Learning Architectures (Transformers, Graph Neural Networks)
• Bayesian Methods & Probabilistic Modeling
• ML for Ads, E-commerce, or Two-Sided Marketplaces (big plus!)
• Proven ability to drive impact across multiple teams and organizations.
• Bonus points if you are familiar with any of the following architectures or have experience with the models mentioned in this benchmark: DCNV2, MMOE, Deep & Wide, ESMM, xDeepFM, and GDCN.s

Benefits

About Rokt’stars:

As a mission-driven, hyper-growth community of curious explorers, our ambition is to unlock the full potential in ecommerce and beyond. Our bias for action means we are not afraid to quickly venture into uncharted territories, take risks or challenge the status quo; in doing so we either win or learn. We work together as one aligned team never letting egos get in the way of brilliant ideas. We value diversity, transparency and smart humble people who enjoy building a disruptive business together. We pride ourselves on being a force for good as we make the world better. 

About The Benefits:

We leverage best-in-class technology and market-leading innovation in AI and ML, with all of that being underlined by building and maintaining a fantastic and inclusive culture where people can be their authentic selves, and offering a great list of perks and benefits to go with it:

• Accelerate your career. We offer roadmaps to leadership and an annual $5000 training allowance
• Become a shareholder. Every Rokt’star gets equity in the company
• Enjoy catered lunch every day and healthy snacks in the office. Plus join the gym on us! 
• Extra leave (bonus annual leave, sabbatical leave etc.) 
• Work with the greatest talent in town
• See the world! We have offices in New York, Seattle, Sydney, Tokyo and London

We believe we’re better together. We love spending time together and are in the office most days (teams are in the office 4 days per week). We also get that you need to balance your life and your commitments so you have the flexibility to manage your own hours and can spend up to a week of every quarter working from anywhere.

If this sounds like a role you’d enjoy, apply here and you’ll hear from our recruiting team.