Senior Applied AI/ML Scientist

We know experience is built in a number of ways. Even if your background doesn’t match the exact requirements, we encourage you to apply and share any relevant skills in a cover letter. Sprout welcomes all candidates to apply, including those who identify as BIPOC, women and underrepresented genders in tech, LGBTQIA+, parents, veterans, persons with disabilities and people of all faiths.

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, employee-led diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and mentorship programs for aspiring leaders.
• Growing corporate social responsibility program that is driven by the involvement and passion of our team members.

The base pay range for this role is $142,300 (min), $177,900 (mid), $213,500 (max) CAD annually. Individual base pay is based on various factors, including work location, relevant experience and skills, the responsibility of the role, and job duties/requirements.

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. We have outlined the various components to an employee’s full compensation package here to help you to understand our total rewards package.

Candidates for this remote work opportunity must be based in either British Columbia or Ontario. If you are based in another location within Canada, we aren’t able to hire in your location at this time; however, if you’d like to stay in touch with us in case that changes in the future, please apply and we’ll save your application for possible future consideration.