Applied AI/ML Scientist

Description

Sprout Social is looking for an Applied AI/ML Scientist to join its AI Business Unit.

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

• Design, develop, and deploy customer-centric features that leverage data science, machine learning (ML) and generative AI technologies. 
• Contribute to tangible, quantifiable, and measurable impact on Sprout Social’s highest priority AI initiatives, directly benefiting our customers and driving key business outcomes.
• Develop robust frameworks for evaluation and measurement of AI features to increase speed, improve quality, and provide demonstrable ROI of product enhancements. 
• Collaborate closely with product management, design, and software engineering partners to deliver high quality AI solutions quickly and confidently.
• Effectively communicate AI capabilities, limitations, and product implications, ensuring alignment between technical possibilities, customer needs, and product vision.

What you’ll bring

We’re looking for an experienced and highly technical AI/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 with a clear focus on customer value, we’d love to talk with you! 

The minimum qualifications for this role include:

• A track record of supporting customer-centric development of AI/ML solutions that resulted in quantifiable business impact. 
• 2+ years of applied experience in AI/ML and data science, working with technical and non-technical stakeholders to drive impactful solutions.
• 2+ 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.
• Expertise in analytical, statistical, and AI/ML methods, with a focus on shipping solutions that drive significant product improvement, resolve customer pain points, and demonstrably enhance user experiences. 
• Experience building with transformer architectures and leveraging embeddings.

Preferred qualifications for this role include experience:

• Rapidly prototyping with new, cutting-edge AI/ML technologies to explore their applicability and potential for business impact.
• Designing and executing A/B testing frameworks and other rigorous experimentation techniques to measure impact.
• Developing deep learning & NLP models.
• Developing  large language model driven features, including evaluating, fine-tuning, optimizing performance, and prompt-engineering to enhance customer journeys. 
• Creating APIs and leveraging services across platforms such as AWS, Azure, GCP, OpenAI, and Anthropic. 
• Enforcing AI/ML model security, bias mitigation, and ethical AI/ML frameworks.

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 customer 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:

• Delivering your first AI/ML related feature(s) or process improvement(s). 
• 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:

• Demonstrating technical ownership of an AI/ML initiative.
• Contributing to our longer-term roadmap of AI at Sprout. 

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

• Continuing to develop impactful AI/ML solutions.
• Identifying new opportunities for AI/ML capabilities.
• Continuing to build relationships with business unit product managers, designers, and engineers. 
• Contributing to elevating the technical excellence of the team and AI/ML best practices at Sprout.
• Expanding your skills by learning from the team and staying current with industry trends and state of the art 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 expectations for AI collaboration during our interview process

• Application Materials (Resume, Cover Letter):
• Candidates are permitted to use AI to refine your self-drafted content (e.g., clarify language, quantify impact).
• Take-Home Assessments:
• Do not use AI, unless the instructions explicitly permit it (e.g., "You may use Generative AI for this coding challenge").
• Interview Preparation:
• Candidates are permitted to use AI for research (Sprout Social’s work, culture) and to practice answering questions.
• Live Interviews:
• AI Assistance is not permitted during any of the live conversations. 
• Guiding Principles:
• Be Yourself: Use AI to refine your authentic ideas and experience, not to replace them.
• Be Transparent: Follow these guidelines and use AI in this hiring process transparently.

Our Benefits Program 

We’re proud to regularly be recognized for our team, product, and culture. We invest in our team with a comprehensive, competitive benefits program:

• Comprehensive Health & Wellness: Premium BCBSIL medical, dental (high/low plans), and vision (Eyemed) insurance for you and your eligible dependents.
• Premium Mental Health Support: Full, free access to Modern Health for you and your dependents, including coaching, therapy sessions, and digital wellness resources.
• Retirement Savings: 401(k) plan with a 50% company match on your first 6% of contributions (a 3% total match).
• Financial Security: 100% employer-paid Life and Disability insurance for your peace of mind.
• Flexible Paid Time Off: A flexible PTO policy, supplemented with additional company-wide Rest & Recharge days throughout the year.
• Paid Parental Leave: Up to 16 weeks of paid leave for new parents to support you in expanding your family.
• Annual Lifestyle Stipend: A $1,000 USD annual Lifestyle Spending Account to spend on your p