Staff Machine Learning Scientist – Personalization

Penguin Random House is the leading adult and children's publishing house in North America, the United Kingdom and many other regions around the world. In publishing the best books in every genre and subject for all ages, we are committed to quality, excellence in execution, and innovation throughout the entire publishing process: editorial, design, marketing, publicity, sales, production, and distribution. Our vibrant and diverse international community of nearly 300 publishing brands and imprints include Ballantine Bantam Dell, Berkley, Clarkson Potter, Crown, DK, Doubleday, Dutton, Grosset & Dunlap, Little Golden Books, Knopf, Modern Library, Pantheon, Penguin Books, Penguin Press, Penguin Random House Audio, Penguin Young Readers, Portfolio, Puffin, Putnam, Random House, Random House Children's Books, Riverhead, Ten Speed Press, Viking, and Vintage, among others.

Penguin Random House is the largest trade publishing company in the world. The Data Science team is seeking a Staff Machine Learning Scientist to lead and advance the development of personalization products, including recommender systems for our websites, email programs, and online marketing. Personalization is a core growth lever for book discovery and customer engagement, directly improving how readers find the right books across every digital touchpoint. Improving recommendation quality and relevance has a direct downstream impact on customer experience and business outcomes.

We are investing in expanding our portfolio of business-critical personalization products and further improving our existing models. This role will own personalization and recommender system work end-to-end, from model development to deployment to output monitoring, in close partnership with business stakeholders, platform engineers, and the rest of the personalization group.

We have a mature machine learning practice and strong infrastructure, supported by strong data warehouse and DevOps partners. We are transitioning to AI-accelerated development and use modern agentic coding tools like Claude Code to speed up how we build and maintain personalization systems, with rigorous quality gates including tests, reproducible workflows, and measurable improvements in model performance and reliability. Experience with Claude Code or agentic workflows is a plus, but we prioritize strong fundamentals and the ability and willingness to learn new workflows effectively.

Specific responsibilities include:

• Define and drive the technical roadmap for personalization and recommender systems, prioritizing roadmap items to meet business goals and defining short-term vision for the team.
• Propose and deliver R&D that directly shapes roadmaps, multiple projects, and long-term deliverables. Models are used over the long term by multiple products and teams.
• Design and lead the development of software used by multiple teams, ensuring long-term maintainability, scalability, and adaptability.
• Ensure complex, multi-service personalization products meet SLAs and provide correct results over time. Adapt systems to changing business needs and resolve multi-product, multi-team service incidents.
• Establish and enforce experimentation best practices, including A/B testing frameworks, offline evaluation methodology, and metrics design across personalization surfaces.
• Lead team meetings, ensure the team's progress on the roadmap, and make technical decisions that unblock projects.
• Manage stakeholders' expectations with data-driven narratives and communicate effectively with senior leadership to align on strategy and track progress.
• Drive organizational efficiency and business impact by implementing new technologies and processes. Foster a collaborative and high-performance team culture.
• Mentor senior and mid-level scientists, setting high code quality standards and best practices for the team.
• Stay current with advances in recommender systems, LLMs for personalization, and representation learning, bringing relevant advances into production when they deliver measurable improvement.

Basic qualifications:

• PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Engineering, Operations Research, Statistics, or a related quantitative field, OR Master's with 8+ years of applied ML experience.
• Deep expertise in recommender systems, personalization, ranking/retrieval, or computational advertising, with a track record of shipping systems that operate at scale.
• Expert-level Python and deep proficiency with modern ML frameworks (PyTorch or TensorFlow) and recommendation-specific tooling (e.g., NVTabular, Merlin, Triton).
• Strong experience with cloud-based ML infrastructure (AWS, Kubernetes, Databricks), containerization (Docker), and model serving at low latency.
• Advanced SQL skills and experience architecting large-scale data pipelines and feature stores.
• Demonstrated ability to define technical roadmaps, influence direction across teams, and make architectural decisions that hold up over time.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to present complex technical work to executive and non-technical audiences.
• Be cutting edge. Use the latest AI tools to develop well-designed and robust software.

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience building and scaling real-time recommendation services handling millions of requests.
• Expertise in A/B testing methodology, causal inference, or experimentation platforms.
• Familiarity with LLM-based approaches to recommendation and content understanding.
• Experience with MLOps practices: model monitoring, feature stores, CI/CD for ML, and automated retraining pipelines.
• Prior experience technically leading a team of ML practitioners and setting standards adopted by others.

The salary range for this position is $210,000 - $250,000. All positions are currently eligible for an annual profit award or bonus, subject to company results.

Applications for this role will be accepted through September 6, 2026 or until the role is filled. We encourage you to apply early, as we review applications on a rolling basis. Please include your resume and cover letter for consideration. Before applying for any role at Penguin Random House, we recommend you review our applicant resources page and our FAQs page.

Penguin Random House job postings include a good faith compensation range for each open position. The salary range listed is specific to each particular open position and takes into account various factors including the specifics of the individual role, and candidate's relevant experience and qualifications.

Full-time employees are eligible for our comprehensive benefits program. Our range of benefits include, but are not limited to, Medical/Prescription drug insurance, Dental, Vision, Health Care/Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account, Health Savings Account, Pre-Tax and Roth 401(k), Short and Long-Term Disability Insurance, Life/AD&D Insurance, Commuter Benefits, Student Loan Repayment Program, Educational Assistance & generous paid time off.

Penguin Random House values the array of talents and perspectives that a diverse workforce brings. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, religion, age, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or protected veteran status.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

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We value the array of talents and perspectives that a diverse workforce brings. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, age, genetic information, or pregnancy.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

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