Principal Data Scientist

NBCUniversal is one of the world's leading media and entertainment companies. We create world-class content, which we distribute across our portfolio of film, television, and streaming, and bring to life through our theme parks and consumer experiences. We own and operate leading entertainment and news brands, including NBC, NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC, NBC Sports, Telemundo, NBC Local Stations, Bravo, USA Network, and Peacock, our premium ad-supported streaming service. We produce and distribute premier filmed entertainment and programming through Universal Filmed Entertainment Group and Universal Studio Group, and have world-renowned theme parks and attractions through Universal Destinations & Experiences. NBCUniversal is a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation.

Our impact is rooted in improving the communities where our employees, customers, and audiences live and work. We have a rich tradition of giving back and ensuring our employees have the opportunity to serve their communities. We champion an inclusive culture and strive to attract and develop a talented workforce to create and deliver a wide range of content reflecting our world.

Comcast NBCUniversal has announced its intent to create a new publicly traded company ('Versant') comprised of most of NBCUniversal's cable television networks, including USA Network, CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen, E!, SYFY and Golf Channel along with complementary digital assets Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow, GolfPass, and SportsEngine. The well-capitalized company will have significant scale as a pure-play set of assets anchored by leading news, sports and entertainment content. The spin-off is expected to be completed during 2025.

Job Description

NBCUniversal, the global media company that brought you some of the world’s most iconic television and film franchises, including: The Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, The Real Housewives, Mr. Robot, The Voice, This Is Us, The Fast & The Furious, Jurassic Park, Minions, and more is looking for a Principal Data Scientist to lead a team working on personalization at Peacock. 
 Are you a fan of machine learning solutions, reinforcement learning, deep learning, and foundation models? Do you want to be a part of the team that builds an advanced recommender engine, active leaning platforms, and personalized solutions for marketing and advertisement? Join the world-class international team of smart and hungry professionals who are working at the cutting edge of technology and science at the epicenter of content, technology and culture.

Position Overview: 

As part of the Media Group Decision Sciences team, the Principal Data Scientist will be responsible for creating machine learning solutions for NBCU’s video streaming service including but not limited to, content recommendations and product experience personalization. 

In this role specifically, the Principal Data Scientist (Deep Learning) will lead algorithmic solution design, rapid prototyping, and technical review for the ML/AI models underlying personalized user experiences and content promotion. They will be a key point of contact for cross-functional architects and software developers as they integrate personalized data products and capabilities across our suite of global and domestic products. They will work with a dynamic cohort of high caliber individuals across Product, Technology, Marketing, Content Discovery, Editorial, and more to build a state-of-the-art real-time video streaming service 

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to: 

• Be a resident expert in recommendation systems design and implementation.

• Lead the team in the development of a recommendation system modeling and experimentation framework. 

• Work with business stakeholders to define priorities, approaches and business requirements for analytical solutions. 

• Manage multiple priorities across business verticals and machine learning lifecycle projects.

• Laise with engineering teams to define data science driven requirements and solutions for major initiatives and opportunities of the streaming service functionality. 

• Drive innovation of the statistical and machine learning methodologies and tools used by the team. Lead improvements in machine learning lifecycle infrastructure.

• Drive a data science culture that inspires and motivates the team to succeed.
  

Qualifications

• Advanced (Master or PhD) degree with specialization in Statistics, Computer Science, Data Science, Economics, Mathematics, Machine Learning, Operations Research or another quantitative field or equivalent.

• 6+ years of combined experience in software development or data science.

• Experience with commercial recommender systems or a lead role in an advanced research recommender system project.

• Working experience with deep learning, including computer vision, computational linguistics/conversational AI, or recommender systems. Strong experience with deep learning using TensorFlow.

• Experience with Google AI Platform/Vertex AI, Kubeflow and Airflow.

• Proficiency in Python.

• Experience in data processing using SQL and PySpark, and extensive experience with NoSQL and Feature Store production interactions.

• Good understanding of algorithmic complexity of model training and testing, particularly for real-time and near real-time models.

Desired Characteristics:

• Experience in content streaming or commerce as a senior contributor to AI/ML-powered product features and user experiences.

• Experience with reinforcement learning based systems.

• Experience with large-scale video assets.

• Ability to build trust across the organization and socialize solutions and identified data insights.

• Pride and ownership in your work and confident representation of your team to other parts of NBCUniversal.

Additional Information

As part of our selection process, external candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with an NBCUniversal employee at one of our locations prior to a hiring decision. NBCUniversal's policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran and require support throughout the application and/or recruitment process as a result of your disability, you have the right to request a reasonable accommodation. You can submit your request to [email protected].