Research Scientist, User Modeling and Personalization

Snap Inc is a technology company that builds products to help people express themselves, live in the moment, and connect with others. Our User Modeling and Personalization Research Team works on new ways to model user behavior and power personalized experiences across Snap’s products.

• Formulate and lead a research agenda in user modeling, generative modeling, recommendation systems, information retrieval, and efficiency.
• Partner with engineering to translate research into business‑impactful ML applications used by millions of Snap chatters.
• Build and evaluate scalable research prototypes in large‑scale machine‑learning scenarios.
• Share expertise with teammates and interns, and publish findings at top conferences.

• Strong technical knowledge of machine learning, information retrieval, personalization, language models, and state‑of‑the‑art deep‑learning literature.
• Demonstrated ability in defining, leading, and executing challenging research projects.
• Strong computer science fundamentals and engineering skills (Python, PyTorch).
• A pragmatic, hands‑on approach to research that emphasizes working prototypes.
• Proven ability to mentor interns, students, and junior researchers.

• PhD in computer science, machine learning, language technologies, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of industry or postdoctoral research experience.
• Track record of publications in top venues (e.g., ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML, KDD, Rec Sys, SIGIR, WSDM, ACL, COLM).
• Experience with distributed (multi‑node, multi‑GPU) ML model training, inference, and experimentation.
• Experience applying language models in generative search, ranking, or personalization.

• Experience with large‑scale ML problems in academia or industry, or equivalent open‑source work.
• Experience with large‑scale data processing or synthesis using ML frameworks on Cloud platforms (Google Cloud, AWS, Azure).
• Familiarity with post‑training preference optimization, large‑scale search or recommendation interaction data, and recommender systems.
• Demonstrated ability to translate cutting‑edge research into tangible product improvements.

• Equity in the form of RSUs.
• Paid parental leave, comprehensive medical coverage, and mental‑health support programs.
• Competitive pay based on region, experience, and market conditions (see detailed pay zones).
  Zone A (CA, WA, NYC): $229,000‑$343,000 annually.
  Zone B: $218,000‑$326,000 annually.
  Zone C: $195,000‑$292,000 annually.

Snap Inc. is an equal‑opportunity employer and complies with applicable federal, state, and local laws. We consider qualified applicants with disabilities and veterans and will provide reasonable accommodation.

We expect team members to work in an office at least 4 days per week to foster collaboration and culture.