Applied Scientist - Machine Learning Products

Last updated an hour ago
Location:Melbourne
Job Type:Full Time
Xero is a beautiful, easy-to-use platform that helps small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping advisors grow and thrive.

At Xero, our purpose is to make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world. This purpose sits at the centre of everything we do. We support our people to do the best work of their lives so that they can help small businesses succeed through better tools, information and connections. Because when they succeed they make a difference, and when millions of small businesses are making a difference, the world is a more beautiful place.


Are you inspired by delivering real-world impact through your work?
Do you want to work with awesome colleagues to solve challenging problems?
Do you want to grow your skills in a supportive environment?

We are the Data Team. A collective of specialists driven by our shared mission to help establish Xero as the most insightful and trusted small business platform. Our backgrounds and work are diverse—we work on data platforms, data modelling, application development, applied research, ethics, literacy, and strategy, to name a few. At the heart of our mission is helping our colleagues and customers get value from data responsibly, on robust data platforms, with robust methods.

Applied Scientists work in cross-functional teams (engineers, designers, product managers, etc) to create AI-powered experiences. We apply machine learning to develop products that reduce toil and provide insight, allowing small businesses to focus on what matters.

What you'll do

  • Immerse yourself in vast quantities of messy and complex data, figuring out what it means and whether it’s useful for machine learning product development
  • Work on analyses, proofs of concept and production-grade product development using a variety of machine learning techniques
  • Generate hypotheses, conduct experiments, and analyze results. Rinse and repeat.
  • Collaborate with engineers to build, maintain, and operate end-to-end machine learning pipelines for training and inference at scale
  • Stay up to date with developments in artificial intelligence
  • Consider the ethics of your work and keep our customers’ interests in focus
  • Identify issues with our data and work with teams to diagnose and rectify the problem

    • About you

  • You rejoice in identifying tough problems that can be solved using scientific thinking, algorithms and analytical data processing
  • You read ML research papers, keep abreast of new work on arXiv.org and sometimes spend your weekends tinkering around with that interesting new framework you read about recently. But ultimately, you relish simple and robust solutions to real problems
  • You instinctively seek to understand how machine learning will impact customer experiences and society more broadly
  • You have at least a years’ experience working on a team that has delivered a machine learning project to a production environment
  • You take pride in writing high quality, documented, and maintainable code
  • You know your way around the ‘nix command line, ssh-ing your way into virtual machines or containers; and
  • You can write Python, Scala or similar

    • What you'll bring

  • Ability to think about both the business and machine learning domains
  • Sound software engineering skills in Python, Scala, or similar
  • Hands on practitioner skills in one or more of: time series forecasting, natural language processing, classical machine learning, deep learning
  • An understanding of the mathematical concepts behind the techniques and toolkits
  • Comfortable with version control and command line
  • Strong communication skills and the ability to tailor a message for peers, and stakeholders (technical and non-technical)
    • Why Xero?

    At Xero we support many types of flexible working arrangements that allow you to balance your work, your life and your passions. We offer a great remuneration package including shares plus a range of leave options to suit your well-being. Our work environment encourages continuous improvement and career development and you’ll get to work with the latest technology.

    Our collaborative and inclusive culture is one we’re immensely proud of. We know that a diverse workforce is a strength that enables businesses, including ours, to better understand and serve customers, attract top talent and innovate successfully. We are a member of Pride in Diversity, in recognition of our inclusive workplace. So, from the moment you step through our doors, you’ll feel welcome and supported to do the best work of your life.