Senior Applied AI/ML Scientist

Sprout Social is looking for a Senior Applied AI/ML Scientist to join its Data Science and AI team.

Why join Sprout Social's Data Science and AI team?

Sprout Social empowers businesses worldwide to harness the immense power and opportunity of social media in today's digital-first world. Processing over one billion social messages daily, our platform serves up essential insights and actionable information to over 30,000 brands, informing strategic decisions that drive business growth and innovation, and fostering deeper, authentic connections to their end customers. Our full suite of social media management solutions includes comprehensive publishing and engagement functionality, customer care solutions, influencer marketing, connected workflows, and business intelligence. We're actively working to intuitively weave AI throughout our products as well as applying them internally to drive our business's growth trajectory.

What you'll do

• Lead the design, development, and deployment of features that leverage data science, machine learning (ML), and generative AI technologies.
• Deliver tangible impact on some of Sprout Social's highest priority corporate goals, to the benefit of our customers.
• Develop frameworks for evaluation and measurement of AI features to increase speed and quality of product enhancements.
• Establish strong partnerships with internal stakeholders, product, design, and software engineering to help shape the product strategy and implementation of AI solutions across Sprout Social.
• Effectively communicate AI capabilities, limitations, and product implications, ensuring alignment between technical possibilities, stakeholder needs, and product vision.

What you'll bring

We're looking for an experienced AI and ML scientist who embraces challenges, practices a growth mindset, and is eager to collaborate with a variety of stakeholders to provide data-driven solutions to business leaders and to Sprout Social's customers. If you excel at experimenting with and implementing AI/ML techniques, continuously improving capabilities, and driving innovation, we'd love to talk with you!

The minimum qualifications for this role include:

• 5+ years of experience in AI/ML and data science, working with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• 5+ years of experience developing models in Python using ML frameworks (e.g. PyTorch, TensorFlow, XGBoost, LGBM, NumPy, pandas) and strong proficiency in SQL and RESTful APIs for querying, transforming, and analyzing large datasets to drive product vision.
• Broad and deep expertise in analytical, statistical, and AI/ML methods, with a focus on product improvement, solving customer pain points, and improving user experiences.
• A track record of leading development of AI/ML solutions that resulted in quantifiable business impact.

Preferred qualifications for this role include:

• Experience quickly prototyping with new AI/ML technologies.
• Experience developing and deploying deep learning models.
• Experience architecting and implementing production large language model driven features, including evaluating, fine-tuning, optimizing performance, and prompt-engineering to enhance customer journeys.
• Experience building and deploying models on OpenSearch and ElasticSearch.
• Experience with model services, deployment technologies, and ML-Ops practices.
• Experience developing with APIs and services across platforms such as AWS, Azure, GCP, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
• Experience in AI/ML model security, bias mitigation, and ethical AI/ML frameworks.
• Experience with AB testing software and deploying via other experimentation techniques.

How you'll grow

Within 1 month, you'll plant your roots, including:

• Complete Sprout's New Hire training program alongside other new Sprout team members.
• Meet and learn from assigned onboarding resources.
• Become familiar with our existing features, available data, and best practices.
• Begin meeting with various stakeholders to understand existing problem spaces and needs.
• Work with your manager to define the first project you'll make an impact with.

Within 3 months, you'll start hitting your stride by:

• Contribute to an AI/ML initiative.
• Continue learning about Sprout's products, customers, and business structure to suggest new features that will increase customer value delivery.

Within 6 months, you'll be making a clear impact through:

• Delivering your first AI/ML related feature(s) or process improvement(s).
• Contribute to our longer-term roadmap of AI at Sprout.
• Refine best practices and guide strategy for our AI/ML feature development process.

Within 12 months, you'll make this role your own by:

• Continuing to develop impactful AI/ML solutions.
• Identify new opportunities for AI/ML capabilities.
• Continue to build relationships with business unit leaders, stakeholders, and executives.
• Contribute to elevating the technical excellence of the team and AI/ML best practices at Sprout.
• Expand your skills by learning from the team and staying current with industry trends and SOTA research.
• Surprise us! Use your unique ideas and abilities to change your team in beneficial ways that we haven't even considered yet.

Of course what is outlined above is the ideal timeline, but things may shift based on business needs and other projects and tasks could be added at the discretion of your manager.

Our Benefits Program

We're proud to regularly be recognized for our team, product and culture. Our benefits program includes:

• Insurance and benefit options that are built for both individuals and families
• Progressive policies to support work/life balance, like our flexible paid time off and parental leave program
• High-quality and well-maintained equipment-your computer will never prevent you from doing your best
• Wellness initiatives to ensure both health and mental well-being of our team
• Ongoing education and development opportunities via our Grow@Sprout program and employee-led diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
• Growing corporate social responsibility program that is driven by the involvement and passion of our team members
• Beautiful, convenient, and state-of-the-art offices in Chicago's Loop and downtown Seattle, for those who prefer an office setting

Whenever possible, Sprout wants to provide our team with the flexibility to work in the location that makes the most sense for them. Sprout maintains a remote workforce in many places in the United States. However, we are not set up in all states, so please look at the drop-down box in our application to see whether your state is listed. Few roles require an office setting. If your position requires a physical presence in a Sprout office, it will be evident in the job listing and your offer letter.

Individual base pay is based on various factors, including work location, relevant experience and skills, the responsibility of the role, and job duties/requirements. In the United States, we have two geographic pay zones. For this role, our current base pay ranges for new hires are:

• Zone 1 (New York, California, Washington): $172,744 (min), $215,900 (mid), $ 259,116 (max) USD annually
• Zone 2 (All other US states): $157,000 (min), $196,300 (mid), $235,600 (max) USD annually

The listed ranges represent the full earning potential in this position. Starting salaries for well-qualified new hires are typically around the midpoint of the range. These ranges were determined by a market-based compensation approach; we used data from trusted third-party compensation sources to set equitable, consistent, and competitive ranges. We also evaluate compensation bi-annually, identify any changes in the market and make adjustments to our ranges and existing employee compensation as needed.

Base pay is only one element of an employee's total compensation at Sprout. Every Sprout team member has an opportunity to receive restricted stock units (RSUs) under Sprout's equity plan. Employees (and their dependents) are covered by medical, dental, vision, basic life, accidental death, and dismemberment insurance, and Modern Health (a wellness benefit). Employees are able to enroll in Sprout's company's 401k plan, in which Sprout will match 50% of your contributions up to 6% with a maximum contribution. Sprout offers "Flexible Paid Time Off" and ten paid holidays. We have outlined the various components to an employee's full compensation package here to help you to understand our total rewards package.

Sprout Social is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate based on identity- race, color, religion, national origin or ancestry, sex (including sexual identity), age, physical or mental disability, pregnancy, veteran or military status, unfavorable discharge from military service, genetic information, sexual orientation, marital status, order of protection status, citizenship status, arrest record or expunged or sealed convictions, or any other legally recognized protected basis under federal, state, or local law. Because Sprout Social is a federal contractor, we affirmatively recruit individuals with a disability and protected veterans. Learn more about our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in our latest DEI Report.

If you require a reasonable accommodation for any part of the interview process or to submit your application, please email us at accommodations@sproutsocial.com. Include the nature of your request and your preferred contact information. We'll do everything we can to support your success during our recruitment process while upholding your privacy. Please note that only inquiries regarding accommodations will receive a response from this email address; other inquiries will not be addressed (e.g., you send your resume but are not requesting an accommodation).

For more information about our commitment to equal employment opportunity, please click here (1) Equal Opportunity Employment Poster and (2) Sprout Social's Affirmative Action Statement.

When you apply for employment with Sprout Social, we will process your job applicant data, including your employment and education history, transcript, writing samples, and references as necessary to consider your job application for open positions. Your personal data will be shared with Greenhouse Software, Inc., and Crosschq, Inc., cloud services providers located in the United States of America and engaged by Sprout Social to help manage its recruitment and hiring process on Controller's behalf. Accordingly, if you are located outside of the United States, by clicking "Submit Application" on this site, you consent to the transfer of your personal data to the United States. For more information about our privacy practices please visit our Privacy Policy. California residents have additional rights and should review the Additional Disclosures for California Residents section in our Privacy Policy.

Additionally, Sprout Social participates in the E-Verify program in certain locations, as required by law.

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