Recommender Systems Intern

About Rapidata

Rapidata offers an API to humans that is revolutionizing the data generation and annotation industry. It delivers highly scalable and extremely fast human data that fuels the AI systems of the future. We have a diverse user base of over 10 million active users from all walks of life. Naturally, this means different people are good at different things. To optimize both efficiency and quality of responses, we need to assign the right tasks to the right person in real time, at global scale.

The Role

We're looking to hire a Recommender Systems Intern, a Master/Graduate student with experience in machine learning, reinforcement learning or data science and a strong interest in recommender systems. You'll become an integral part of a dynamic and highly skilled team. It's not an isolated research project, your task is to outperform the current system, not just offline but also online with strict (<5ms) latency requirements.

You'll work independently on a primary task while closely supported by senior engineers and ML practitioners. If things go well, we'd very much like to promote and keep you afterwards.

Responsibilities

• Researching state of the art recommender systems
• Defining evaluation metrics
• Working with large-scale human data
• Show improvements in offline as well as online experiments
• Collaborating with senior engineers and ML leads on production systems
• Work independently on a primary task, with occasional side-quests

Requirements

• Experience in machine learning, reinforcement learning or sequential decision-making projects (coursework or practical)
• Solid statistical and mathematical foundation
• Intrinsic drive & motivation
• Excellent English communication skills, both oral and written
• Strong Python skills
• Work authorization: Swiss or EU citizenship or enrollment in a degree program where the internship is a mandatory part of the curriculum.

Nice-to-Have

• Ability to work in Zürich
• Experience in working with databases (Postgres, MongoDB, ClickHouse)
• Experience in utilising coding assistance tools like Claude Code

What We Offer

• The opportunity to significantly impact a young, dynamic startup.
• A competitive salary
• Flexibility in terms of working hours
• Nice office in Zürich
• Drinks and snacks of your choice.
• Potential full-time employment after the internship.

If you're excited about recommender systems and want to see your work deployed at global scale, we'd love to hear from you. To apply, please submit your CV and a brief cover letter outlining your experience and interest in the role to join@rapidata.ai. We look forward to learning more about you!