Staff Machine Learning Scientist

Job Description

The AI Agents org is revolutionizing the chatbot and voice assistance landscape with Gen3, a cutting-edge AI Agent system that is pushing the boundaries of conversational AI. Gen3 is not your typical chatbot; it's a goal-oriented, dynamic, and truly conversational system capable of reasoning, planning, and adapting to user needs in real-time. By leveraging a multi-agent architecture and advanced language models, Gen3 delivers personalized and engaging user experiences, moving beyond scripted interactions to handle complex tasks and "off-script" inquiries with ease.

We are delighted to be hiring a Staff Machine Learning Scientist for the AI Agent product at Zendesk. This is an exciting opportunity for a senior-level leader to not only bridge the gap between cutting-edge ML research and real-world impact but to actively define that bridge. You will play a pivotal role in shaping our product vision through bottom-up innovation, rapid prototyping, and the establishment of best practices. You'll have the freedom to discover and champion new product ideas, mentor junior scientists, and work alongside a talented cross-functional team to build the world’s most advanced AI agents in CX.

Key Responsibilities

• Pioneer Product Vision and Innovation: You will partner closely with product managers and other stakeholders to discover and define the product roadmap. You'll champion bottom-up innovation, bringing forward novel ideas and research to influence the team's strategic direction.

• Lead Rapid Prototyping: You will own the full research and development lifecycle from end-to-end, translating business requirements into technical designs. This includes the rapid implementation and testing of hypotheses using suitable tools and technologies to quickly validate solutions for future production.

• Standardize Research and Evaluation: You will establish and evangelize research standards and best practices for the evaluation of our AI agents, ensuring consistency and rigor in how we measure success.

• Mentor and Enable the Team: You will act as a force multiplier, mentoring other scientists and engineers, and enabling them to tackle complex challenges. You will also help non-technical stakeholders, like Product Managers, better understand the technical landscape.

• Drive End-to-End Projects: You will own complex, designated product areas, guiding the team through the full research project lifecycle, from initial ideation to implementation, experimentation, and reporting.

• Stay at the Forefront of Research: You will keep up with the latest advancements in the NLP and ML fields, introducing new concepts and literature as potential solutions to our business problems.

• Collaborate and Peer Review: You will regularly discuss and peer-review research ideas with your colleagues, contributing to a culture of shared learning and continuous improvement.

Who You Are

• A Proven Innovator: You have a strong track record of Machine Learning or NLP research, ideally in a senior industry role. You are known for not just solving problems, but for identifying and framing them.

• Expert in Deep Learning: You have deep knowledge of building deep learning neural network architectures, with a focus on NLP. You can implement complex ideas from research literature into robust proof-of-concept models.

• Experienced with Generative AI: You have significant experience with LLMs, Prompt Engineering, and AI Agent Context Management. Experience with conversational AI and voice technologies, including text-to-speech (TTS) and speech-to-speech (STS), is a huge bonus.

• A Collaborative Leader: You have a positive, proactive, and team-oriented mindset. You are passionate about your craft and are keen to take part in product discussions. You care deeply about helping others succeed and have great communication skills.

• The Right Qualifications: You hold a degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field.

How We Measure Success

• Strategic Impact: Your work directly influences and aligns with the overall product roadmap and strategic goals.

• Mentorship and Team Growth: Your ability to mentor and enable others demonstrably improves the team's capabilities and output.

• Bottom-Up Innovation: Your ability to identify new opportunities and champion these ideas leads to tangible improvements in our products.

• Research Standardization: The research evaluation frameworks you establish are widely adopted and improve the quality and rigor of our work.

• Collaboration: Your effectiveness in collaborating with product managers, engineers, designers, and other stakeholders helps bridge technical and non-technical gaps.

The Interview Process:

We are excited to learn more about you, so we want to be transparent about what you can expect from our interview process:

1. Initial Call with Talent Team - 15 mins

2. Interview with one member of the Hiring Team - 45 minutes

3. Take-home technical/research challenge

4. A technical interview with two of our scientists to talk more in-depth about your technical experience and answer any questions you might have - 1 hour

5. Final interview with 2 Engineering Managers - 45 minutes

About Zendesk

Zendesk builds software for better customer relationships. It empowers organizations to improve customer engagement and better understand their customers. Zendesk products are easy to use and implement. They give organizations the flexibility to move quickly, focus on innovation, and scale with their growth. 

More than 100,000 paid customer accounts in over 150 countries and territories use Zendesk products.  Based  in  San  Francisco,  Zendesk  has operations  in  the  United  States,  Europe,  Asia,  Australia,  and  South  America.

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