Sprout Social is looking for a Senior Applied AI/ML Scientist to join its AI, Data, and Intelligence Business Unit.

Why join Sprout Social’s Data Science and AI team?

Sprout Social empowers businesses worldwide to harness the immense power and opportunity of social media in today’s digital-first world. Processing over one billion social messages daily, our platform serves up essential insights and actionable information to over 30,000 brands, informing strategic decisions that drive business growth and innovation, and fostering deeper, authentic connections to their end customers. Our full suite of social media management solutions includes comprehensive publishing and engagement functionality, customer care solutions, influencer marketing, connected workflows, and business intelligence. We're actively working to intuitively weave AI throughout our products as well as applying them internally to drive our business’s growth trajectory.

What you’ll do

• Lead the design, development, and deployment of customer-centric features that leverage data science, machine learning (ML) and generative AI technologies.
• Deliver tangible, quantifiable, and measurable impact on Sprout Social’s highest priority AI initiatives, directly benefitting our customers and driving key business outcomes.
• Develop robust frameworks for evaluation and measurement of AI features to increase speed, improve quality, and provide demonstrable ROI of product enhancements.
• Collaborate closely with product management, design, and software engineering partners to deliver high quality AI solutions quickly and confidently.
• Effectively communicate AI capabilities, limitations, and product implications, ensuring alignment between technical possibilities, customer needs, and product vision.

What you’ll bring

We’re looking for an experienced and highly technical AI/ML scientist who embraces challenges, practices a growth mindset, and is eager to collaborate with a variety of stakeholders to provide data-driven solutions to business leaders and to Sprout Social’s customers. If you excel at experimenting with and implementing AI/ML techniques, continuously improving capabilities, and driving innovation with a clear focus on customer value, we’d love to talk with you!

The minimum qualifications for this role include:

• A track record of leading customer-centric development of AI/ML solutions that resulted in quantifiable business impact.
• 5+ years of applied experience in AI/ML and data science, working with technical and non-technical stakeholders to drive impactful solutions.
• 5+ years of experience developing models in Python using ML frameworks (e.g. PyTorch, TensorFlow, XGBoost, LGBM, NumPy, pandas) and strong proficiency in SQL and RESTful APIs for querying, transforming, and analyzing large datasets to drive product vision.
• Broad and deep expertise in analytical, statistical, and AI/ML methods, with a focus on shipping solutions that drive significant product improvement, resolve customer pain points, and demonstrably enhance user experiences.
• Experience building with transformer architectures and leveraging embeddings.

Preferred qualifications for this role include experience:

• Rapidly prototyping with new, cutting-edge AI/ML technologies to explore their applicability and potential for business impact.
• Collaborating with / influencing product management to define, refine, and prioritize data-driven product roadmaps based on technical feasibility and customer value.
• Designing and executing A/B testing frameworks and other rigorous experimentation techniques to measure impact.
• Developing and deploying deep learning models.
• Developing and deploying NLP solutions.
• Architecting and implementing production large language model driven features, including evaluating, fine-tuning, optimizing performance, and prompt-engineering to enhance customer journeys.
• Building and deploying models on OpenSearch and ElasticSearch.
• Java development experience.
• Engineering model services, deployment technologies, and ML-Ops practices.
• Creating APIs and services across platforms such as AWS, Azure, GCP, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
• Enforcing AI/ML model security, bias mitigation, and ethical AI/ML frameworks.

How you’ll grow

Within 1 month, you’ll plant your roots, including:

• Complete Sprout’s New Hire training program alongside other new Sprout team members.
• Meet and learn from assigned onboarding resources.
• Become familiar with our existing features, available data, and best practices.
• Begin meeting with various stakeholders to understand existing problem spaces and customer needs.
• Work with your manager to define the first project you’ll make an impact with.

Within 3 months, you’ll start hitting your stride by:

• Delivering your first AI/ML related feature(s) or process improvement(s).
• Continue learning about Sprout’s products, customers, and business structure to suggest new features that will increase customer value delivery.

Within 6 months, you’ll be making a clear impact through:

• Demonstrating technical ownership of an AI/ML initiative.
• Contributing to our longer-term roadmap of AI at Sprout.
• Refining best practices and guide strategy for our AI/ML feature development process.

Within 12 months, you’ll make this role your own by:

• Continuing to develop impactful AI/ML solutions.
• Identifying new opportunities for AI/ML capabilities.
• Continuing to build relationships with business unit leaders, stakeholders, and executives.
• Contributing to elevating the technical excellence of the team and AI/ML best practices at Sprout.
• Expanding your skills by learning from the team and staying current with industry trends and state of the art research.
• Surprise us! Use your unique ideas and abilities to change your team in beneficial ways that we haven’t even considered yet.

Of course what is outlined above is the ideal timeline, but things may shift based on business needs and other projects and tasks could be added at the discretion of your manager.

Our Benefits Program

We’re proud to regularly be recognized for our team, product, and culture. We invest in our team with a comprehensive, competitive benefits program:

• Comprehensive Health & Wellness: Premium BCBSIL medical, dental (high/low plans), and vision (Eyemed) insurance for you and your eligible dependents.
• Premium Mental Health Support: Full, free access to Modern Health for you and your dependents, including coaching, therapy sessions, and digital wellness resources.
• Retirement Savings: 401(k) plan with a 50% company match on your first 6% of contributions (a 3% total match).
• Financial Security: 100% employer-paid Life and Disability insurance for your peace of mind.
• Flexible Paid Time Off: A flexible PTO policy, supplemented with additional company-wide Rest & Recharge days throughout the year.
• Paid Parental Leave: Up to 16 weeks of paid leave for new parents to support you in expanding your family.
• Annual Lifestyle Stipend: A $1,000 USD annual Lifestyle Spending Account to spend on your physical, mental, and financial well-being.
• Work From Home Support: A one-time $550 USD stipend to set up your home office, plus a monthly $50 USD stipend for internet.
• Giving Back: 16 hours of paid volunteer time annually, plus a $100 annual match for your charitable donations.
• Additional Financial Perks: Access to pre-tax commuter benefits, subsidized child/eldercare (Care.com), discounted pet insurance (Figo), and no-cost personalized financial wellness support through Your Money Line.

*This list is for informational purposes only. Benefit offerings are discretionary and subject to change and do not constitute a contract or guarantee of benefits.

Whenever possible, Sprout wants to provide our team with the flexibility to work in the location that makes the most sense for them. Sprout maintains a remote workforce in many places in the United States. However, we are not set up in all states, so please look at the drop-down box in our application to see whether your state is listed. Few roles require an office setting. If your position requires a physical presence in a Sprout office, it will be evident in the job listing and your offer letter.

Individual base pay is based on various factors, including whether you’re located in Zone 1 or Zone 2, as well as relevant experience and skills. In the United States, we have two geographic pay zones. For this role, the expected base pay ranges for new hires are:

• Zone 1 (New York, California, Washington): $176,000 - $242,000 USD annually
• Zone 2 (All other US states): $160,000 - $220,000 USD annually

The listed ranges represent earning potential in this position. These ranges were determined by a market-based compensation approach; we used data from trusted third-party compensation sources to set equitable, consistent, and competitive ranges. We also evaluate compensation bi-annually, identify any changes in the market and make adjustments to our ranges and existing employee compensation as needed.

Base pay is only one element of an employee's total compensation at Sprout. Every Sprout team member has an opportunity to receive restricted stock units (RSUs) under Sprout’s equity plan. Employees (and their dependents) are covered by medical, dental, vision, basic life, accidental death, and dismemberment insurance, and Modern Health (a wellness benefit). Employees are able to enroll in Sprout’s company’s 401k plan, in which Sprout will match 50% of your contributions up to 6% with a maximum contribution. Sprout offers “Flexible Paid Time Off” and ten paid holidays. We have outlined the various components to an employee’s full compensation package here to help you to understand our total rewards package.

Sprout Social is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate based on identity- race, color, religion, national origin or ancestry, sex (including sexual identity), age, physical or mental disability, pregnancy, veteran or military status, unfavorable discharge from military service, genetic information, sexual orientation, marital status, order of protection status, citizenship status, arrest record or expunged or sealed convictions, or any other legally recognized protected basis under federal, state, or local law. Because Sprout Social is a federal contractor, we affirmatively recruit individuals with a disability and protected veterans. Learn more about our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in our latest DEI Report.

If you require a reasonable accommodation for any part of the interview process or to submit your application, please email us at accommodations@sproutsocial.com. Include the nature of your request and your preferred contact information. We'll do everything we can to support your success during our recruitment process while upholding your privacy. Please note that only inquiries regarding accommodations will receive a response from this email address; other inquiries will not be addressed (e.g., you send your resume but are not requesting an accommodation).

For more information about our commitment to equal employment opportunity, please click here (1) Equal Opportunity Employment Poster and (2) Sprout Social's Affirmative Action Statement.

Additionally, Sprout Social participates in the E-Verify program in certain locations, as required by law.