Tech Lead, Applied Machine Learning (News Ranking)

Responsibilities

Machine Learning Tech Leads are responsible to lead teams to tackle complex problems related to recommendation and optimization (search ranking, collaborative filtering, personalized recommendation, diversification, and more) and make a company-wide impact

• Play a critical role in setting the direction and goals for a global machine learning team, in terms of project impact, core-ranking system design, and machine learning excellence.
• Plan and execute engineering development of state-of-the-art core-ranking system to provide Personalized Discovery experience to millions of users around the world.
• Collaborate closely with Engineering and Product Leadership and global cross-functional teams to develop global product.
• Be a go-to person for software engineers to enhance systems related to news features (articles, pages, channels, search, etc) by developing complex algorithm and model architecture which will deepen the understanding of article contents as well as user behaviors to deliver high quality user experience and increase user engagement.
• Initiate and lead mid to large size projects.
• Mentor and coach other ML engineers in Japan and other regional offices.

Minimum Requirements

• Rich experience in hands-on developing the prediction, optimization, or other relevant systems for the online web service and products (e.g content recommendation, online advertisement, search optimization, etc).
• Experience in making company-wide business impact through machine learning, deep learning, or mathematical optimization (e.g achieving increase user's time-spent in the service, etc).
• Familiar with architecture and implementation mechanism of at least one mainstream machine learning programming framework (TensorFlow/Pytorch/MXNet/etc).
• Initiate and lead mid to large size projects.
• Experience of leading and mentoring engineers.
• BS degree or above in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Science (physics or mathematics) or other relevant majors

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with several of the following ML libraries: Tensorflow, xgboost, Keras, PyTorch, scikit-learn, pandas, numpy, etc.

• Knowledge of developing and debugging in Java and Spring-boot
• Experience with Hadoop/Hive/Spark/Flink/AWS
• Business-level proficiency in English

Perks and Benefits at the SmartNews Tokyo Office

• Support program for employee’s self-development and well-being
• Healthy lunches are prepared on-site daily in our SmartKitchen, located in our West Office building. You can even see the cooks at work!
• Need a pick-me-up? Stop by ChikyuCoffee, our in-house coffee shop located in both the East and West Office buildings, and get a cup of gourmet coffee, espresso-based beverage, or other seasonal drink!
• SmartNews provides all healthcare and social insurance benefits required by Japanese labor law

Visa Sponsorship and Relocation Support

For candidates who meet eligibility requirements, SmartNews can sponsor visas.
To support a smooth transition for candidates who are moving to Japan from overseas, SmartNews partners with a travel service provider.

About SmartNews

News can change the world, save lives, and bring us all closer together through empathy and understanding—but not if no one reads it. Out of the hundreds of millions of articles and posts, how do we deliver the information that matters the most?

Founded in 2012 in Tokyo, Japan, SmartNews is a leading global information and news discovery company dedicated to delivering quality information to the people who need it. We provide news that matters to millions of users thanks to our unique machine learning technology and relationships with over 3,000 global publisher partners. Our SmartNews app, available on iOS and Android, is already used in over 150 countries worldwide.

But we’re only just getting started, and that’s why we need someone like you.

Machine learning on news ranking is crucial for analyzing millions of articles every day to deliver the most engaging high-quality information in near-real-time while providing a "Personalized Discovery" experience to our users.

About Our Engineering Culture

Our engineers come from variety of backgrounds, from large, well-established companies to small ventures. We believe that employees with diverse sets of skills working together make for strong, cohesive teams.