Machine Learning Scientist

Overview

Spotter empowers the world's best Creators with capital, data, and insights to

scale their programming into sustainable media businesses. Through these

partnerships, Spotter helps brands partner with creator-led franchises to unlock

growth, amplify impact, and build lasting cultural relevance.

Spotter has already deployed over $980 million to Creators to reinvest in

themselves and accelerate their growth, with plans to reach $1 billion in

investment in 2026. With a premium catalog that spans over 725,000 videos,

Spotter generates more than 88 billion monthly watch-time minutes, delivering a

unique scaled media solution to Advertisers and Ad Agencies that is transparent,

efficient, and 100% brand safe. For more information about Spotter, please

visit https://spotter.com [https://spotter.com/].

Overview

We’re looking for a talented and intensely curious Machine Learning Scientist

with deep expertise in building and deploying production machine learning

models, particularly in areas such as deep learning, reinforcement learning,

contextual bandits, ranking, personalization, recommendation systems, and

adaptive learning systems. You thrive in a fast-paced startup environment and

are motivated by building models that don’t just perform well in experiments,

they ship to production and create real value for YouTube creators.

In this role, you’ll train, evaluate, optimize, and deploy a wide range of

machine learning models, from neural networks and ranking systems to contextual

bandits, recommendation models, sequential decision-making systems, and

traditional machine learning approaches. You’re passionate about staying at the

forefront of AI and machine learning, especially in areas where models learn

from feedback, adapt over time, and improve real-world product outcomes.

We’re a team of builders who value continuous learning, rapid experimentation,

and delivering AI solutions that make a measurable difference for creators. If

you enjoy solving complex problems, iterating quickly, and building intelligent

products that help the world’s top YouTube creators work smarter and create

better content, you’ll thrive at Spotter.

What You’ll Do

• You’ll develop machine learning models that move beyond experimentation and into
• production, where they directly improve creator workflows and product
• experiences. Working alongside Analytics, Product, and Engineering, you’ll help
• develop intelligent systems that improve how creators discover insights, make
• decisions, and create content.
• Your work may include:
• * Designing, training, evaluating, optimizing, and deploying production machine
• learning models.
• * Building recommendation, ranking, and personalization systems that adapt to
• creator behavior, product feedback, and changing objectives.
• * Applying reinforcement learning, contextual bandits, online learning, and
• other adaptive learning approaches where they improve product outcomes.
• * Designing systems that balance exploration and exploitation, short-term
• performance and long-term value, and multiple competing product objectives.
• * Developing reward models, feedback models, and objective functions that
• translate noisy, sparse, delayed, or implicit signals into reliable model
• training and evaluation targets.
• * Working with logged interaction data to understand user behavior, evaluate
• model performance, improve decision quality, and reduce bias in model
• evaluation.
• * Applying offline policy evaluation, counterfactual evaluation, causal
• inference, or related techniques to reason about model changes before and
• after deployment.
• * Designing experiments to evaluate model performance, measure product impact,
• and continuously improve production systems.
• * Building scalable model training, evaluation, deployment, and inference
• pipelines.
• * Optimizing models for accuracy, latency, scalability, reliability, and
• production maintainability.
• * Working with structured and unstructured datasets using Python and SQL.
• * Collaborating closely with Product and Engineering to translate customer
• problems into machine learning solutions.
• * Staying current with advances in reinforcement learning, recommendation
• systems, ranking, personalization, deep learning, experimentation, and
• production ML, and thoughtfully applying new techniques where they create
• measurable value.

Who You Are

• * Master’s degree or PhD in Computer Science, Statistics, Applied Mathematics,
• Electrical Engineering, Physics, or another quantitative field.
• * 5+ years building, evaluating, and deploying machine learning models in
• production environments.
• * Strong experience with modern deep learning frameworks and production ML
• workflows.
• * Experience building one or more of the following:
• * recommendation systems
• * ranking systems
• * personalization models
• * reinforcement learning systems
• * contextual bandits
• * online learning systems
• * adaptive decision-making systems
• * Strong understanding of reinforcement learning concepts such as exploration
• vs. exploitation, reward design, policy evaluation, delayed feedback,
• feedback loops, and sequential decision-making.
• * Experience working with logged interaction data, behavioral data, or feedback
• signals to train, evaluate, and improve models.
• * Experience designing experiments and using data to improve model performance
• in real-world product environments.
• * Experience with offline evaluation, A/B testing, counterfactual reasoning,
• causal inference, or other methods for measuring model impact.
• * Experience training, evaluating, tuning, and deploying machine learning
• models across deep learning and traditional ML approaches.
• * Strong understanding of embeddings, representation learning, neural networks,
• sequence modeling, and modern deep learning architectures.
• * Strong Python and SQL skills.
• * Excellent communication skills and the ability to work cross-functionally
• with Product, Engineering, Analytics, and other stakeholders.
• * Curiosity, ownership, and a passion for building products that customers
• love.

Nice to Have

• * Experience with large-scale recommendation, ranking, personalization, or
• adaptive optimization systems.
• * Familiarity with ad recommendation, ad ranking, or campaign optimization
• systems used by large-scale platforms, such as YouTube, Google, Meta, TikTok,
• Amazon, or similar consumer marketplace platforms.
• * Experience serving large-scale ML models in production.
• * Experience building machine learning systems for large-scale digital
• platforms, such as creator platforms, consumer apps, recommendation systems,
• ad recommendation systems, campaign optimization systems, or workflow
• automation tools.
• Why Spotter
• * Medical insurance covered up to 100%
• * Dental & vision insurance
• * 401(k) matching
• * Stock options
• * Discretionary PTO
• * Complimentary gym access
• * Autonomy and upward mobility
• * Diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture, where your voice matters.
• In compliance with local law, we are disclosing the compensation, or a range
• thereof, for roles that will be performed in Culver City. Actual salaries will
• vary and may be above or below the range based on various factors including but
• not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and
• certifications; and other business and organizational needs. A reasonable
• estimate of the current pay range is: $167K-$185K salary per year. The range
• listed is just one component of Spotter’s total compensation package for
• employees. Other rewards may include an annual discretionary bonus and equity.
• Spotter is an equal opportunity employer. Spotter does not discriminate in
• employment on the basis of race, religion, creed, color, national origin,
• ancestry, citizenship, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic
• characteristics or information, marital status, sex (including pregnancy,
• childbirth, breastfeeding, and related medical conditions), gender, gender
• identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, military status, veteran
• status, use of or request for family or medical leave, political affiliation, or
• any other status protected under applicable federal, state or local laws.
• Equal access to programs, services and employment is available to all persons.
• Those applicants requiring reasonable accommodations as part of the application
• and/or interview process should notify a representative of the Human Resources
• Department.