Manager, ML/AI Products

Who is Allbirds?

At Allbirds, we believe in using business as a force for good. We’re a global footwear and apparel brand with roots in New Zealand and our headquarters in San Francisco. Since 2016, we’ve been on a mission to prove that comfort, design, and sustainability aren’t mutually exclusive. Our commitment to creating better things in a better way is fueled by a belief that the fashion industry needs to focus less on flash and more on thoughtfulness. And as a certified B Corp, we’re dedicated to making the most sustainable products we can using premium natural materials - designed for life’s everyday adventures.

Where we need help

We are growing rapidly, and the complexity of our business (products, geographies, and selling channels) grows with it. We need help to create intelligent systems and tools that can support this scale and complexity. We need a leader in the ML/AI space to conceptualize, design, create and enhance products in this emerging and heavily evolving space in support of our customers, their journey with us, and our mission, to Make Better Things in a Better Way.

What does the job entail?

• Identify significant opportunities to automate and optimize technology products (back end and front end) powered by ML/AI, that serve our customers in a brand resonant personalized way at scale.
• Create the ML/AI products roadmap- incorporating data, research and market analysis, long-range strategy, and more into your POV. Proactively build business cases for features/initiatives that can make customer touch points (in person or digital) more successful at scale.
• Conduct gap analysis. Build a development plan, sequence, and prioritize individual tasks.
• Work with data scientists and engineers both onsite and offshore to build models, prototypes, and intelligent ML/AI products.  Ensure strict data science discipline in model development, and partner with the business to test the efficacy of these models in real life.
• Lead, create, and maintain the MLOps ecosystem
• Develop in-depth knowledge and become the go-to expert for your products.

What kind of person are we looking for?

• Passionate about working with a multidisciplinary team of researchers, engineers, data scientists, and business partners.
• Comfortable with ambiguity.
• Can lead the team of data scientists
• Able to collaborate with product managers and engineers to deploy ML models into a fully functional AI product.
• Able to break a big idea or a complex problem into a smaller tangible chunk of tasks.
• Able to communicate with business folks and data scientists with equal ease, including the ability to explain black box solutions to the business through engaging stories and narratives.

More practical skills needed:

• BS in computer science, engineering, or equivalent. MS in a similar field preferred.
• Shoe/Clothing e-commerce or poly-channel (with an emphasis on e-commerce) background is a plus.
• 6+ years of hands-on experience in developing and deploying models (supervised, unsupervised, reinforced learning models) at scale using scikit-learn, XGB, pyCaret, etc.
• Hands-on experience of working in python, and R. 
• Previous experience in NLP and computer vision using Pytorch or similar open source is plus
• Direct experience of cloud technologies (AWS/GCP), working knowledge of data pipeline through webhooks and APIs.
• Prior experience in Looker (BI tool) or willing to learn

What can we offer?

• Competitive salary + equity
• Medical/Dental/Vision insurance
• 401k employer match
• Paid parental leave
• Fitness benefits
• Discounted products

Diversity

Allbirds is an equal opportunity employer and makes employment decisions on the basis of merit. Allbirds policy prohibits unlawful discrimination based on race, color, religious creed, sex, gender identity, marital or veteran status, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information or characteristics (or those of a family member), sexual orientation, pregnancy, or any other consideration made unlawful by federal, state, or local laws. It also prohibits discrimination based on a perception that anyone has any of those characteristics, or is associated with a person who has or is perceived as having any of those characteristics. All such discrimination is unlawful.