Wattpad Data Scientist, Wattpad
CA$120-160k
More information about location
Platform for sharing original writing
Open for applications
Platform for sharing original writing
1001+ employees
Open for applications
CA$120-160k
More information about location
1001+ employees
Company mission
Wattpad's mission is to create a world where everyone's story can be heard, and anyone can belong.
Role
Who you are
- A passion for applying analytics and machine learning to business problems
- Motivation and excitement to deal with ambiguous problems and challenges
- 3+ years experience in a Data Scientist role with proven results in delivering high impact support and/or products with quantitative methods and applied machine learning through the lifecycle of development, implementation and evaluation
- Bachelor's or Master’s degree in relevant field or equivalent experience
- A systematic approach to problem solving and project organization
- Clear communication about problem requirements, benefits and challenges of approaches with stakeholders and team members
- A team player who can collaborate and partner with other teams to achieve results
- Comfort working with complex, high dimensional data in SQL, Python and Pyspark
- Comfort with applied machine learning frameworks: scikit-learn, PyTorch, or Tensorflow
- Proven experience in a software engineering environment developing and deploying data pipelines, dashboards and/or solutions
What the job involves
- The Data Products & Analytics (DPA) team focuses on supporting and improving Wattpad’s Search, Recommendation and Analytics systems
- We are a cross functional team of data scientists, analysts and engineers with the vision to connect millions of readers to the right story at the right time
- If you have a passion for building discovery systems at massive scale, come join us to build the next iteration of our ML engines!
- Bring knowledge of analysis and applied machine learning to the challenges of product creation, development, maintenance and improvement to Wattpad systems (e.g. recommendations, search) with an appreciation for the behaviours of Wattpad users
- Follow and maintain best practices for analysis, experimentation and machine learning solution development and communicate those to stakeholders and partners to help create business value and impact
- Prove concepts, prototype and build iteratively in areas such as but not limited to: user analysis and metrics, dashboards, feature pipelines, recommendation, search and ranking solutions to achieve impact while developing comprehensive knowledge of business objectives, data structures, business impact, processes, advocating for changes where needed to improve the product
- Work cross functionally to build and communicate key findings, POCs, prototypes, solutions and collaboration closely with product managers, engineers and designers to help build news experience on Wattpad
Application process
- Wattpad is conducting all interviews in a distributed manner using applicable third party software where needed and using visual interface tools such as Google Meet and Zoom
Our take
Content is king and Wattpad has managed to create a platform that aggregates the most loved original writing content in the world, turning the traditional publishing industry on its head.
Where authors used to submit drafts to dozens of publishing houses in the hope of getting some eyeballs on their work, Wattpad opened up the process to millions of young authors by letting them easily submit their work, and fostering a community around their software that offers feedback and help.
The e-reading platform is now looking to double down on its strategy of taking its user-generated fiction and turning it into successful intellectual property upon which original series and movies can be based. However a significant challenge for Wattpad is in producing original, marketable content from its platform given the popularity of fanfiction, stories which are based on existing intellectual property.
Another challenge for Wattpad is the current economic conditions which have affected much of the tech sector and are not sparing digital publishing. Having shelved bold plans for the future it also laid off 15% of its workforce in March 2023. Having realigned for its current business needs however, it is now well placed to weather the current market downturn.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
3% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)
Jan 2018
$51m
LATE VC
Apr 2014
$46m
SERIES C
Total funding: $117.8m
Company benefits
- Full health benefits
- Career development & Mentorship opportunities
- RRSP matching
- Generous parental Leave top-up
- Flexible hours
- Regular hackathons
- Healthy snacks & drinks
- Your choice of hardware
- Monthly work-from-home allowance
- Beautiful offices in Toronto and Halifax
- Easy access to transit
Company HQ
St. Lawrence, Toronto, ON
Leadership
Allen lau
(CEO)Lau attended University of Toronto where he earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering followed by a master's in the same subject. Thereafter he briefly worked as a software engineer for Brightspark before founding his first notable company, Tira Wireless, a mobile development startup. He is also the co-founder of Two Small Fish Ventures, a fund that invests in Toronto and Waterloo-based early-stage internet companies with strong network effects.
Ivan Yuen
(CSO)Prior to Wattpad, Ivan co-founded FeedM8 and served as the company’s CTO. Before that he was one of the first employees of Tira Wireless, where he helped grow the technical team and developed new and emerging wireless technologies. Ivan graduated from the University of Waterloo with a degree in Computer Engineering and also earned an MBA from the Rotman School of Management.
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