About Iggy 
Iggy is the first developer toolkit that simplifies access to complex location data. Founded by an Ex-Airbnb data scientist (Lindsay) and cartographer (Zack), we empower companies to build innovative products and models.
We are a remote WFH team, with team members on the East and West Coasts, from Portland OR, Berkeley and SF, CA, and Seattle, WA to Philadelphia, PA, St. Pete, FL and Cambridge MA. The ideal candidate will be based in either the Bay or Portland city long-term, but we will always offer first-class support for remote team members.
We’re a seed-stage startup backed by some amazing institutional investors including First Round Capital and Amplify, an incredible micro VC Brianne Kimmel/WLV, the Airbnb Alumni Investment Syndicate AirAngels, as well as founders from Plaid, Looker and Instacart and other high value-add investors.
You'll be joining a small, fun, mission-oriented and mature team. We're intentional about the products we build and the culture we create. We value creativity, grit, curiosity, kindness and diversity. We love what we do for work, and we do other things too: one of our founders has sailed around the world and is in a rock band, another is an avid rock climber, traveler, and cheese fanatic. We value who you are outside/beyond work and are excited to support you in your passions.
Please read our diversity statementhere.
About the Role
At Iggy we are building models that "understand" geography, similarly to the way NLP models "understand" written text. We're looking to bring on an ML engineer with a research background who is fascinated by the idea of applying state-of-the-art representation models to location data.
The ML Research Engineer will ideate, prototype, and develop methods for embedding geography that enable us to compare, index, and make predictions about places. The person in this role will also drive development of systems for geographic information retrieval. We have big ideas in this space and need someone to magnify our vision and execute on it.
We’re looking for someone with the confidence to move quickly and make big decisions, the humility to own mistakes you make along the way, and the resilience to weather the ups and downs of a category-defining startup.
You will have wide latitude on architectural decisions and implementation. You will be a critical team member on our journey from 0-1, with massive impact.
Responsibilities & Duties
Develop machine learning models that encode or operate on location data and associated text
Propose ways to evaluate your models, acquire or create the necessary data, and iterate on your approach. Think about ways to get real-world feedback on your predictions and integrate it into the ML cycle.
Work with Engineering and ML Ops to put your models into customer-facing systems
Work with the Product and Engineering teams to prioritize the data we ingest to support your models, and pitch in with developing data ingest pipelines as necessary
Write about your work in blog posts or academic publications
About You
You are a great candidate for this role if you:
Enjoy machine learning research (and have the publications and/or code to prove it), but like to start from first principles and simple models.
Can talk at length about ML model frameworks, like CNN or transformer, and describe how they can be applied differently based on the form of the data (e.g. text vs images vs graphs).
Are not discouraged by problems for which there are no readily-available datasets for training. You are willing to be creative about ways to generate the necessary ground-truth data or bootstrap model learning.
Know your way around the PyTorch or Tensorflow docs.
Have worked with or studied information retrieval systems and/or models of semantics.
Thrive when given latitude to be creative but stay grounded, humble, and love being a part of a team
Great at working with cross-functional teams
Execute quickly
Excellent communication and the ability to communicate technical concepts and decisions to stakeholders
Prior work with geospatial data is a huge bonus, but not strictly necessary.
We'd love to see a side project/portfolio or even better, a blog post from any potential candidates!
Benefits
We offer a robust package of benefits* that includes:
100% Company paid premiums for medical, dental and vision, 50% paid premiums for dependents
401(k) retirement plan
6 weeks full time + 6 weeks part time parental leave
Flexible + generous PTO (+11 paid holidays)
Professional Development funds
Charity Matching
Virtual happy hours
Team off-sites (when it is safe to do so)
When Covid-19 is resolved we will discuss additional benefits including commuter benefits and office perks. We will soon be adding Life Insurance and AD&D Benefits.
*Benefits are in addition to the basics: competitive salary and equity, computer
Iggy is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to promoting a diverse and inclusive environment for all current and future employees.
How to apply: email us at ds-careers@askiggy.com and specify the job you are applying for in the subject line. Include links to github/portfolio/blog posts. No agencies please.