Applied Scientist, Machine Learning

Etsy is the global marketplace for unique and creative goods. We build, power, and evolve the tools and technologies that connect entrepreneurs with buyers around the world. Etsy, Inc.'s 'house of brands' portfolio has expanded to now include four individually distinct ecommerce brands – Etsy, fashion resale marketplace Depop, musical instrument marketplace Reverb, and Brazil-based handmade goods marketplace Elo7. As an Etsy employee, you’ll tackle unique problems alongside talented coworkers committed to Keeping Commerce Human. We're large enough that you'll focus on meaningful, complex challenges, but small enough that you can make a rewarding impact.

Etsy is an international marketplace with 65M+ handmade and vintage items from passionate artists, designers and vintage collectors. Our Data Science & Machine Learning (DSML) powers machine learning driven systems and solutions to help our 45M+ buyers navigate Etsy’s diverse and unique inventory of over 65M items.

In the DSML org, Applied Scientists work closely with product teams to develop custom machine-learning models that can drive product vision and customer impact. We are looking for individuals who are product and delivery-driven, and are passionate about making ML innovations in the areas of Ranking, Recommendations, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing,  Information Retrieval, and Computational Advertising to help improve the Etsy buyer/seller experience.

We are considering remote candidates based in the US for this position. Etsy offers three different work modes to meet the variety of needs and preferences of our team: Flex mode for candidates who are comfortable traveling to an office location 2+ times per week, Remote mode, and Office-based mode. Learn more about our flexible work modes and vaccination policy here.

About the Role

Example Projects: 

• Develop state-of-the-art embeddings to capture salient signals of our users and listings, including aspects like content, function, budget, and preferences. 

• Extract image features from our 300M+ listing images that capture semantic content, aesthetic style, material, and more

• Implement and compare supervised learning models (LR, GBDT, and DNNs), or ensembles of models, to improve key metrics, often with multiple competing objectives

• Develop models with custom architecture or objective functions that target Etsy-specific problems, such as revenue optimization, ads bidding strategies, ads budget pacing, seller fairness, seasonality, multi-objective optimization, etc.

What You'll Do:

• Push the state of the art and apply the latest advances in deep learning and machine learning to improve buyer and seller experiences on Etsy

• Prototype, optimize, and productionize large-scale ML models that help deliver key results

• Conduct A/B experiments to validate the effectiveness of ML models and pipelines

• Work closely with product managers, ML engineers, full-stack engineers, and designers on product teams to deliver content to tens of millions of users

• Share impactful and innovative work in the wider ML research community, including presenting at top-tier ML/DS conferences such as: KDD, WSDM, WWW, Recsys, etc.

Basic requirements:

• You have a track record of applying machine learning techniques in addressing real-world problems 

• You have focused expertise in one of the following fields: natural language processing,  reinforcement learning, deep learning, or computer vision. 

• You have solid software development skills. You are comfortable with using git, Linux environments, dockers, and other tools for writing robust, production-ready code. 

Preferred requirements:

• You have a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science or related engineering fields, or 5+ years of practical machine learning experience.

• You have published at peer-reviewed conferences, such as ICML, KDD, SIGIR, WSDM, etc. or  you have given talks/tutorials in the industrial conferences like Spark Summit. 

• You have experience using Google Cloud Platform.

• You have experience in building production search, recommendations, advertising, or general e-commerce systems.

What's Next

If you're interested in joining the team at Etsy, please send a cover letter and resume telling us why you'd be right for the position. As you’ve hopefully seen already, Etsy is a place that values individuality and variety. We don’t want you to be like everyone else — we want you to be like you! So write to us and tell us what you’re all about.

Our Promise

At Etsy, we believe that a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace makes us a more relevant, more competitive, and more resilient company. We encourage people from all backgrounds, ages, abilities, and experiences to apply. Etsy is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, ancestry, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital or family status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression, pregnancy or caregiver status, veteran status, or any other legally protected status. We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations to participate in the job application and interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. While Etsy supports visa sponsorship, sponsorship opportunities may be limited to certain roles and skillsets.

For U.S. roles only
 

Many Etsy roles are open to remote candidates, and you'll be able to identify which ones within the location header of each job description. We’re open to remote hires from all U.S. states except Hawaii and Alaska. For candidates who will work remotely from Colorado, visit this link for information related to Colorado's Equal Pay for Equal Work Act.