Senior Applied Research Scientist - Personalization

Spotify is hiring a Senior Applied Research Scientist - Personalization for a remote role open to applicants in United States. Level rates it ; you can apply on Spotify.

Level's read on this job

Builds AI ●●●● is how Level rates this research scientist role: the job is building AI systems.
This is listed as a remote role.
The posting mentions PyTorch, computer vision and NLP among its tools and skills.
Level classes it as a senior role.
Spotify has 85 other open roles on Level.

AI in this role

PyTorch

computer-visionnlpspeech

The Personalization team makes deciding what to play next easier and more enjoyable for every listener. From Blend to Discover Weekly, we're behind some of Spotify's most-loved features. We built them by understanding the world of music and podcasts better than anyone else. Join us and you'll keep millions of users listening by making great recommendations to each and every one of them.
Within Personalization, the Speak Team owns the development of Spotify's state-of-the-art speech models, contributing to speech recognition, speech synthesis, and speech-to-speech models. We craft voice models that match human-level emotional expressiveness, so we can deeply engage our listeners and support creators at scale. Our groundbreaking work on speech synthesis relies on state-of-the-art deep learning methods and evaluation techniques, highly efficient data processing and model serving, and capturing audio of outstanding quality from our voice talent pool.
We're looking for a senior applied research scientist with experience in developing novel ML techniques and architectures and with a strong interest in working across a full production pipeline to produce state-of-the-art generative conversational speech-to-speech models. You'll collaborate with our engineering teams to help develop our production pipelines, explore new ideas and methods to improve quality, understanding and realism, as well as push the frontiers of what is possible with our speech technology.

What You'll Do

Develop and experiment with new methods for speech synthesis and speech recognition, along with end-to-end approaches, building on the latest research and ideas.
Work towards the expansion of our speech use-cases targeting different markets and products.
Be part of a highly motivated research team dedicated to building and creating models at scale to power the Spotify platform.
Champion best practices for research and development, sharing your knowledge and experience with other researchers within Speak.
Collaborate with our engineering and data teams on ideas requiring new infrastructure or new high-quality data, as well as to help improve our speech recognition and speech synthesis pipelines, and help turn proven ideas into scalable products.

Who You Are

You have a strong background in ML (PhD degree on top of professional experience), and experience in working with any of the following: transformers, GANs, diffusion models, flow matching, VAEs, audio codecs.
You have experience in developing generative models for speech synthesis, speech recognition, audio/music, natural language processing, or computer vision.
You have strong experience with Python, particularly PyTorch.
You have strong communication skills and the ability to explain technical ideas with clarity to technical and non-technical people alike.
You have experience in an academic or professional setting conducting high-quality research.

Where You'll Be

This role is based in New York City.
We offer you the flexibility to work where you work best! There will be some in person meetings, but still allows for flexibility to work from home

The United States base range for this position is $169,157 - $241,653 plus equity. The benefits available for this position include health insurance, six month paid parental leave, 401(k) retirement plan, a monthly meal allowance, 23 paid days off, 13 paid flexible holidays. These ranges may be modified in the future.
Spotify is an equal opportunity employer. You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what’s playing in your headphones. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all thrive, contribute, and be forward-thinking! So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It’s in our differences that we will find the power to keep revolutionizing the way the world listens. At Spotify, we are passionate about inclusivity and making sure our entire recruitment process is accessible to everyone. We have ways to request reasonable accommodations during the interview process and help assist in what you need. If you need accommodations at any stage of the application or interview process, please let us know - we’re here to support you in any way we can.

How we rate this

Senior Applied Research Scientist - Personalization at Spotify rates 94 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Key facts

Senior Applied Research Scientist - Personalization is an open job at Spotify.
Level rates this role AI Level 4 of 4: Builds AI.
The role is based in New York, NY and is marked remote.
The job was posted on September 21, 2026.
Seniority: senior.
Applications are handled by Spotify. Apply on Spotify

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

Computer visionNLPSpeechPyTorch

Also common in research scientist jobs at this level

Machine learning LLM Reinforcement learning C++CUDA Generative AI

Pay

Typical research scientist job: $190k

This posting doesn't list pay. Use the typical research scientist figure when pay comes up. See research scientist jobs

Questions you could be asked

Walk me through a computer vision problem you solved, from raw data to a deployed model.
What NLP problem have you worked on, and how did you measure whether it actually worked?
What have you built with speech recognition or text-to-speech, and where did it break?
What's a project where you used PyTorch hands-on?
How would you decide a model or AI system is ready to ship?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: Computer vision, NLP, Speech, and PyTorch. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.

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