Senior Machine Learning Engineer II, Ads Response Prediction

Навыки

• Коммуникация
• CPC / CPM / CTR
• dbt
• Дообучение моделей
• IDS / IPS
• LLM
• Machine Learning

О компании и продукте

• As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer II on the Ads Response Prediction team, you will lead the design and development of core ML models that power Instacart’s ads ecosystem. This is a research-leaning role focused on theoretical problem formulation, training methodology, and model quality rather than infrastructure or full-stack engineering. You will tackle fundamental challenges in pCTR modeling such as mitigating selection bias, position bias, and optimizer’s curse in training data, improving model calibration across surfaces and domains, and advancing our multi-task learning and sequence modeling capabilities. You will also have the opportunity to shape our next-generation foundation model approach for ads ranking and contribute to cutting-edge retrieval systems like TIGER (Transformer Index for Generative Recommenders), Semantic ID and domain language models.
• The Ads Response Prediction team owns all systems, algorithms and ML models to ensure a relevant and engaging Ads experience to customers of all the platforms powered by Instacart. This includes search and exploration retrieval systems, sequential modeling and generative retrieval systems for next interaction recommendations, LLM integrations, relevance models, pCTR models, bidding models and incrementality models. The team optimizes for an efficient marketplace to ensure delightful customer shopping experience, desirable advertiser business outcome and Instacart Ads revenue.

Задачи

• We're transforming the grocery industry
• At Instacart, we invite the world to share love through food because we believe everyone should have access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together
• Where others see a simple need for grocery delivery, we see exciting complexity and endless opportunity to serve the varied needs of our community
• We work to deliver an essential service that customers rely on to get their groceries and household goods, while also offering safe and flexible earnings opportunities to Instacart Personal Shoppers
• Instacart has become a lifeline for millions of people, and we’re building the team to help push our shopping cart forward
• If you’re ready to do the best work of your life, come join our table
• Instacart is a Flex First team
• There’s no one-size fits all approach to how we do our best work
• Our employees have the flexibility to choose where they do their best work—whether it’s from home, an office, or your favorite coffee shop—while staying connected and building community through regular in-person events
• Learn more about our flexible approach to where we work

Требования

• PhD/Master in machine learning, statistics, computer science, information retrieval, or a closely related quantitative field
• 6+ years of combined academic and industry experience (including PhD research) applying ML to ranking, recommendation, or prediction problems at scale
• Deep understanding of CTR/conversion prediction modeling, including familiarity with architectures such as Deep & Wide, DeepFM, DCN, and multi-task learning formulations
• Strong foundation in causal inference, counterfactual reasoning, and training data bias mitigation
• Ability to reason about selection bias, position bias, and propensity-based correction methods
• Proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks (PyTorch, Tensorflow, JAX). Fluency in data manipulation tools (SQL, Spark, Pandas)
• Track record of formulating ambiguous problems into well-scoped ML research directions and delivering results through rigorous experimentation
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to explain complex modeling decisions to cross-functional stakeholders including product managers and data scientists
• Hands-on experience with autoregressive sequence models for user behavior prediction, generative retrieval, or transformer-based ranking architectures

Будет плюсом

• Experience in ads ranking or auction-based systems (pCTR, bid optimization, ROAS feedback loops, marketplace dynamics)
• Familiarity with learned representations such as Semantic IDs, product embeddings, or other approaches to reducing feature cardinality and cold-start challenges
• Experience with transfer learning or domain adaptation techniques (e.g., LoRA, adapter-based fine-tuning) applied to recommendation or ranking models
• Publication record in top-tier venues (KDD, WWW, RecSys, NeurIPS, ICML, SIGIR, or similar)
• Experience mentoring junior engineers or shaping technical direction for a modeling team
• Familiarity with LLM-driven approaches to recommendation, including prompt-based personalization and AI-assisted model development (AutoML)
• Instacart provides highly market-competitive compensation and benefits in each location where our employees work
• This role is remote and the base pay range for a successful candidate is dependent on their permanent work location
• Please review our Flex First remote work policy here
• Offers may vary based on many factors, such as candidate experience and skills required for the role
• Additionally, this role is eligible for a new hire equity grant as well as annual refresh grants
• Please rea d more about our benefits offerings here
• For US based candidates, the base pay ranges for a successful candidate are listed below
• CA, NY, CT, NJ
• OR, DE, ME, MA, MD, NH, RI, VT, DC, PA, VA, CO, TX, IL, HI
• All other states

Условия

• 240,000 — $253,500 USD
• 230,000 — $243,000 USD
• 221,000 — $233,000 USD
• 201,000 — $212,000 USD

Паспорт вакансии

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