Senior Machine Learning Scientist (Discovery)

Coursera was launched in 2012 by two Stanford Computer Science professors, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, with a mission to provide universal access to world-class learning. It is now one of the largest online learning platforms in the world, with 148 million registered learners as of March 31, 2024.

Coursera partners with over 325 leading university and industry partners to offer a broad catalog of content and credentials, including courses, Specializations, Professional Certificates, Guided Projects, and bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Institutions around the world use Coursera to upskill and reskill their employees, citizens, and students in fields such as data science, technology, and business. Coursera became a B Corp in February 2021.

Join us in our mission to create a world where anyone, anywhere can transform their life through access to education. We're seeking talented individuals who share our passion and drive to revolutionize the way the world learns.

We at Coursera are committed to building a globally diverse team and are thrilled to extend employment opportunities to individuals in any country where we have a legal entity. We require candidates to possess eligible working rights and have a compatible timezone overlap with their team to facilitate seamless collaboration. As a remote-first company, our interviews and onboarding are entirely virtual, providing a smooth and efficient experience for our candidates.

Job Overview:

We are seeking a pioneering Senior Machine Learning Scientist to join our Discovery Science ML team at Coursera, focusing on creating the next generation of hyper-personalized search systems and recommender systems. The candidate will play an instrumental role in researching and developing state-of-the-art techniques for relevant search and recommendations. In addition to helping build robust systems, this role requires keeping abreast of emerging trends and innovations in machine learning, information retrieval, and online education.

Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, and maintain advanced search ranking models, leveraging machine learning techniques such as label collection, personalized ranking, candidate retrieval, user behavior analysis, & LLM’s
• Explore and implement robust query understanding functionality, document understanding, user preference understanding, and low latency transformer-based architectures to improve search relevance
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to align research goals with business needs and ensure successful deployment of innovative search solutions into production.
• Build and manage large-scale search datasets, including corpora, relevance labels, and user interactions, utilizing tools and techniques for data collection, cleaning, and preprocessing.
• Conduct thorough evaluations of search models using industry-standard metrics, analyze results, and provide insights for model improvement and business strategy.
• Stay up-to-date with the latest trends in ML, search science, RecSys, and information retrieval, frequently attending conferences, workshops, and engaging in collaborative research projects.
• Contribute to Coursera's research efforts by publishing in top-tier conferences such as SIGIR, WWW, CIKM, and similar venues.
  
  

Basic Qualifications:

• PhD or Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Retrieval, or closely related fields.
• Demonstrated experience in developing advanced search models, recommender systems, incorporating techniques like natural language processing (NLP) and learning-to-rank algorithms.
• Familiarity with information retrieval metrics, evaluation methodologies, and scalable search system architecture.
• Track record of publishing research in top-tier conferences such as RecSys, SIGIR, EMNLP, WWW, CIKM, or similar venues.
  
  

Preferred Qualifications:

• Proficiency in programming languages and deep learning frameworks such as Python, TensorFlow, or PyTorch.
• Experience in working with large-scale search datasets and tools for data collection, cleaning, and preprocessing.
• Familiarity with ML deployment in production environments and tools for version control, such as Git.
• Proven ability to stay current with emerging research and technologies in the ML , search science, or recommender systems domain.
• Experience collaborating with cross-functional teams and excellent communication abilities.
• Passion for driving impact in the field of online education through innovative ML and search science techniques.
• Familiarity with Coursera's platform and course offerings, as well as active participation in wider AI and Machine Learning communities, is a plus.
  
  

If this opportunity interests you, you might like these courses on Coursera:

• Unsupervised Learning, Recommenders, Reinforcement Learning
• Recommender Systems: Evaluation and Metrics
  
  

Compensation:

Coursera offers competitive pay and equitable compensation practices. Our job titles may span more than one career level. The targeted hiring base salary range for this role is between $134,000 - $200,00 for all Canada candidates. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, including but not limited to prior work experiences, training/education, transferable skills, business needs, and geographical location. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. This role may also be eligible for variable pay, equity, and benefits.

Coursera is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer and considers all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital status, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected class.

If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process, please contact us at accommodations@coursera.org.

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