Recommender Systems Lead

About Rapidata

Rapidata provides 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 over the world. 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 Lead, a senior professional with significant experience in the topic, coming from either a production-heavy industry background or a strong applied research background. Ideally, you've built high-engagement recommendation systems - maybe you made people scroll TikToks a little long or spend way too much on impulse purchases. Now it's time to transfer that knowledge to improve data labeling for the next generation of AI models.

You should have built a system like this in the past, saw what does and does not work, and also know the pitfalls of actually running a system that makes millions of decisions per hour under strict latency constraints (<5ms). You'll have the opportunity to introduce new modeling approaches, rigorously evaluate them, and see them deployed in a live system operating at global scale — closing the loop between theory, experimentation, and production.

Responsibilities

• Developing, Testing and Deploying recommender systems
• Defining and owning success metrics (both for short-term and long-term horizons)
• Designing offline evaluation pipelines and online experimentation frameworks, our platform is perfect for continuous A/B tests
• Showing clear performance improvements
• Translating research ideas into production-ready systems and measurable business impact
• Hiring and leading a small team

Requirements

• Proven experience building and operating production-grade ranking, personalization, or decision sys and/or leading applied research that was validated in real-world systems
• Experience in deploying systems with strict latency constraints
• Solid statistical and mathematical foundation
• High ownership and autonomy over a core company system
• Excellent English communication skills, both oral and written

Nice-to-Have

• Ability to work in the Bay Area or Zürich
• Publications or patents in relevant areas (e.g. recommender systems, ranking, bandits, applied ML), especially where ideas were validated on real-world data or systems

What We Offer

• The opportunity to significantly impact a young, dynamic startup.
• A competitive salary and equity package.
• Flexibility in terms of working hours with the possibility of remote work.
• Nice office in Zürich
• Drinks and snacks of your choice.

If you're excited about building systems that make millions of real-time decisions 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!