[Hiring] AI Research Engineer @Netflix

Role Description

At Netflix, our mission is to entertain the world. Together, we are writing the next episode - pushing the boundaries of storytelling, global fandom and making the unimaginable a reality. We are a dream team obsessed with the uncomfortable excitement of discovering what happens when you merge creativity, intuition and cutting-edge technology. Come be a part of what’s next.

Algo Core is a horizontal team within AI for Member Systems (AIMS) that owns reward modeling, utility estimation, and multi-objective optimization as shared capabilities used across Netflix’s recommendation, personalization, and promotion systems. We’re looking for a Research Engineer to serve as technical lead for this surface area — driving the roadmap for how Netflix combines member value and business value into a single, tunable framework (using auction-based and constrained-optimization techniques) for deciding what gets promoted where across the member experience.

Key Responsibilities:

• Drive the team’s technical vision and roadmap for reward modeling, utility estimation, and multi-objective optimization — including auction-based and constrained-optimization approaches to allocating promotional real estate.
• Drive cross-functional partnerships with Merchandising, Ads, MECS, Product, and Data Science & Engineering to align AI/ML capabilities with business priorities.
• Partner with the Personalization Foundations team to integrate and leverage the utility layer, reward signals, and multi-objective optimization across all member-facing AI models.
• Design and run rigorous offline experiments and A/B tests to validate the impact of new reward, utility, and multi-objective optimization systems on key business and member-experience metrics.
• Contribute to the team’s technical culture through mentorship, code review, and raising the bar on engineering practices.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience applying machine learning in an industry setting, with a track record of delivering impactful production systems.
• Experience driving successful partnerships with both technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
• Master’s or PhD in a computational field such as computer science, statistics, math, operations research, or physics.
• Deep expertise in ML and optimization algorithms and frameworks, with hands-on experience training, tuning, and deploying models in production.
• Experience with reward modeling, utility estimation, or constrained-optimization and auction-based allocation systems.
• Strong software engineering skills in Python, plus experience with Scala or Java.
• Strong 80/20 mindset: ability to scope the right problem, ship pragmatically, and maintain rigorous standards without over-engineering.

Requirements

• NOTE: This role sits within Algo Core, the horizontal team inside AI for Member Systems (AIMS) that owns reward modeling, utility estimation, and multi-objective optimization.

Benefits

• Comprehensive Health Plans
• Mental Health support
• 401(k) Retirement Plan with employer match
• Stock Option Program
• Disability Programs
• Health Savings and Flexible Spending Accounts
• Family-forming benefits
• Life and Serious Injury Benefits
• Paid leave of absence programs
• Full-time hourly employees accrue 35 days annually for paid time off to be used for vacation, holidays, and sick paid time off.
• Full-time salaried employees are immediately entitled to flexible time off.