Research Scientist, Spotify
Personalization
$133.2-190.3k
+ Equity
Commercial music streaming service
Open for applications
Commercial music streaming service
1001+ employees
Open for applications
$133.2-190.3k
+ Equity
1001+ employees
Company mission
To unlock the potential of human creativity—by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by it
Role
Who you are
- You have a Master’s or PhD in machine learning, AI, or a related field, or equivalent research experience
- You have demonstrated expertise in machine learning and artificial intelligence through peer-reviewed publications at conferences such as NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, KDD, or RecSys
- You have deep knowledge of machine learning, with hands-on experience in areas such as post-training and reinforcement learning for large models, reward design, large-scale distributed training, or evaluation of model behavior
- You are experienced in designing experiments and working with real-world datasets to validate research ideas
- You care about advancing understanding of user behavior and improving experiences across music and talk content
- You bring curiosity, creativity, and a thoughtful approach to solving complex, open-ended problems
- You value collaboration and actively seek diverse perspectives in your work
What the job involves
- The Personalization team makes deciding what to play next easier and more enjoyable for every listener. From Blend to Discover Weekly, we’re behind some of Spotify’s most-loved features
- We built them by understanding the world of music and podcasts better than anyone else. Join us and you’ll keep millions of users listening by making great recommendations to each and every one of them.Spotify’s
- Personalization organization builds the technology that helps millions of listeners discover what they love. Within this space, our research team focuses on advancing the state of the art in machine learning and AI to shape the future of personalization
- We explore new approaches, challenge existing assumptions, and contribute to the broader research community while influencing long-term product direction
- Conduct original research in machine learning and AI, with a focus on large-scale foundation models, generative AI, and post-training methods, including reinforcement learning
- Develop novel methodologies, models, and evaluation frameworks to advance personalization systems
- Design and execute rigorous experiments to explore new ideas and validate research hypotheses
- Contribute to the scientific community through publications, talks, and conference participation
- Collaborate with cross-functional partners to translate research insights into long-term product opportunities
- Help define and evolve a forward-looking research agenda aligned with Spotify’s personalization strategy
- Mentor others and contribute to a strong, curious, and collaborative research culture
Our take
Spotify was founded in an attempt to combat the rampant music piracy that was causing significant harm to the industry. The company has since taken music streaming mainstream and now has 180m+ paying subscribers across the world.
With features that include a highly accessible interface and a vast catalogue of artists, Spotify's strong brand has been able to maintain growth in spite of fierce competition from deep-pocketed rivals like Amazon and Apple. The company has achieved this by making smart acquisitions to move into other verticals to strengthen its offerings, especially podcasting, by acquiring Gimlet Media, Anchor and Parcast.
Spotify's future plans include rapid growth with a goal to become a one-stop destination for all digital sound, as well as AI and NFT integrations. However, high costs incurred from the acquisition of exclusive podcasts, increasing competitor strength, and weak bottom-line growth mean that the company must find a balance to maintain its position in the sector.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
23% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 8 rounds)
Jan 2016
$1bn
CONVERTIBLE
Jun 2015
$526m
SERIES G
Total funding: $2.1bn
Company benefits
- Extensive learning opportunities, through our dedicated team, GreenHouse
- Flexible share incentives letting you choose how you share in our success
- Global parental leave, six months off - fully paid - for all new parents
- All The Feels, our employee assistance program and self-care hub
- Flexible public holidays, swap days off according to your values and beliefs
Company HQ
Norrmalm, Stockholm, Stockholms län
Leadership
Daniel Ek
(CEO & Chairman)Founded Spotify in 2006. Previously worked as an executive at Tradera, an auction company that was sold to eBay and was briefly the CEO of uTorrent.
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