Data Science Intern (Personalization & Recommender Systems)

Faire leverages the power of machine learning and data insights to revolutionize the wholesale industry, enabling local retailers to compete against giants like Amazon and big box stores. Our highly skilled team of data scientists and machine learning engineers specialize in developing algorithmic solutions for search, personalization, recommender systems, and ranking. Our ultimate goal is to empower local retail businesses with the tools they need to succeed.

We are looking for exceptional Master’s and PhD candidates specializing in recommender systems, personalization, or applied machine learning.

This role is ideal for candidates who have:

• Demonstrated strong interest in recommender systems / personalization
• Experience with modern ML approaches to ranking and representation learning
• For PhD candidates: a track record of publications or submissions to top-tier venues (e.g., KDD, RecSys, ICML, NeurIPS, WWW, SIGIR)
• For Master’s candidates: high-impact research projects, internships, or open-source work in relevant areas

You will work on core personalization problems that directly affect millions of recommendations per day, partnering closely with ML engineers to bring research ideas into production.

• Design and deploy state-of-the-art recommender systems for ranking and discovery
• Develop user and item representations using embeddings, sequence models, or graph-based methods
• Build systems leveraging real-time and streaming signals for dynamic personalization
• Apply exploration–exploitation techniques (e.g., contextual bandits, reinforcement learning)
• Improve diversification, novelty, and long-term user engagement
• Run large-scale A/B experiments to evaluate model performance in production
• Contribute to the end-to-end ML lifecycle: problem formulation → modeling → offline evaluation → online experimentation

• Research → Production impact: Your work will directly ship and affect marketplace outcomes
• Rich, real-world data: Sparse, noisy, and high-dimensional data at scale
• Challenging objectives: Multi-sided marketplace optimization (retailers, brands, platform)
• Strong ML culture: Close collaboration with experienced ML engineers and applied scientists
• Opportunity to publish and build on prior research, where applicable

• Currently pursuing or recently completed a Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or a related quantitative field
• Proficiency in Python and familiarity with the modern ML stack (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, Pandas, SQL)
• A solid theoretical foundation in machine learning and statistics

• Publications or submissions in top-tier venues such as KDD, RecSys, ICML, NeurIPS, WWW, SIGIR
• Experience with:
• Recommender systems (collaborative filtering, deep recommenders, ranking)
• Representation learning / embeddings
• Sequential models (RNNs, Transformers for user behavior)
• Bandits / reinforcement learning
• Large-scale retrieval and ranking systems
• Familiarity with offline evaluation metrics (NDCG, MAP, recall) and online experimentation
• Experience working with large-scale or production datasets

• Duration: 12–14 weeks (flexible start dates)
• Location: San Francisco
• Paid internship with potential for extension or return offer

We value candidates who:

• Think deeply about modeling trade-offs and real-world constraints
• Care about both research rigor and practical impact
• Can independently drive ambiguous problems from idea to measurable outcome

Are excited about applying cutting-edge ML to help small businesses thrive

San Francisco: the pay rate for this role is $75 USD per hour.

Actual hourly pay will be determined based on permissible factors such as transferable skills, work experience, market demands, and primary work location. The pay range provided is subject to change and may be modified in the future.

Faire uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to screen and select applicants for this position.

This job posting is for an existing vacancy.

#LI-DNI

• Move fast: You'll own meaningful problems that serve customers around the globe with the agency to move fast and see your results clearly.
• Equipped to scale: We invest in what matters, including the latest enterprise AI tools, to help you work smarter and get more out of every day.
• Best in class: Our team is full of sharp, kind, and generous colleagues who care about their craft and about helping you grow in yours.
• Real rewards. Competitive pay, equity, and comprehensive benefits designed to support your life inside and outside of work.
• Belonging: We're intentional about building an environment where every Faire employee has equal access to opportunities, growth, and success.

Faire was founded in 2017 by a team of early product and engineering leads from Square. We’re backed by some of the top investors in retail and tech including: Y Combinator, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Forerunner Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, and DST Global. We have headquarters in San Francisco and Kitchener-Waterloo, and a global employee presence across offices in Toronto, London, and New York. To learn more about Faire and our customers, you can read more on our blog.

Faire provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

Faire is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. Accommodations are available throughout the recruitment process and applicants with a disability may request to be accommodated throughout the recruitment process. We will work with all applicants to accommodate their individual accessibility needs.  To request reasonable accommodation, please fill out our Accommodation Request Form (https://bit.ly/faire-form)

For information about the type of personal data Faire collects from applicants, as well as your choices regarding the data collected about you, please visit Faire’s Privacy Notice (https://www.faire.com/privacy)