Data Scientist

The Associated Press is an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting. Founded in 1846, AP today remains the most trusted source of fast, accurate, unbiasednews in all formats and the essential provider of the technology and services vital to the news business. More than half the world's population sees AP journalism every day.

The Associated Press’ Metadata and Data Science Team seeks a Data Scientist based in New York, NY.

The Data Scientist will designand implement data science and applied machine learningsolutionssupportingnew product development,search and discover yon platform, contentenrichmentand metadata generation.

As a member of cross-functional project teams, theDataScientist will perform data analysis, evaluate commercial and open-source models, anddeliversolutionswith real-world impact.

The team works closely with various departments and functions across the organization to design, implement and manage end-to-endcontentmetadata, tomaintainthe integrity of schema standards, and to build solutions with data,analytics and machine learning methods.

• Evaluate, fine-tune, andmaintainstatistical and machine learning modelsusedinrun-time production environments, measuring and communicating performance improvements to stakeholders
• Partner with cross-functional teams to design andoptimizeAI/ML solutions that deliver new product capabilities and internal workflow improvements, using news articles, photos, videos, election results, and other news data
• Research, evaluate, and recommend models and methodologies across the AI/ML landscape, presenting recommended solutions to technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Identify and address gaps inmodelquality and performance metrics, synthesizing findings into clear, actionable recommendations
• Contribute to the design and enhancement of data and ML pipelines,including multimodal embedding generation and knowledge extraction,with a focus on accuracy, efficiency, and scalability
• Design user-centered solutions and search algorithms focused on quality and performance
• Stay current with emerging technologies and advances in NLP, machine learning, and data science, proactively surfacing opportunities for improvement
• Support the full model development lifecycle, from problem definition and prototyping through integration,deployment, monitoring, and iteration
• Communicate analysis and present findings clearly, adapting to a range of technical and business audiences

• 3+ years of relevant data science experience, with strongproficiencyin Python including Num Py, Pandas, and large-scale semi-structured JSON data
• Bachelor's degree in Data Science or Computer Science
• Experienced applying core machine learning methods including classification, clustering, regression, and ranking
• Hands-on experience with NLP techniques such as entity recognition, disambiguation, semantic similarity, and embedding-based retrieval
• Experience with transformer models for structured extraction, classification, summarization, and generation
• Experience with hybrid search algorithms, retrieval pipelines,intent detection,query expansion,and relevance tuning in Elasticsearch or Open Search
• Experience working with both language and multimodal models
• Experience and comfort working withreal-worlddata, including text and visuals, at scale
• Familiar with ML engineering and MLOps practices, witha track recordof delivering runtime solutions
• Familiarity with cohort analysis, session segmentation, A/B testing, and confidence calibration
• Analytical and curious, with strong problem-solving skills and a practical focus on high-impact, cost-aware solutions
• Able toeffectivelymanagemultipleprojectdeliverablessimultaneously
• Comfortablebeingaccountable for deliverables across the full product development lifecycle,from problem definition through launch and iteration
• An effective communicator who can tailor analysis and presentations to both technical and non-technical audiences
• Collaborative and empathetic, with a genuine focus on user impact and a desire to grow data literacy across the organization
• Advanced-level professional competency in written and spoken English
• Authorization…