Senior Staff Data Scientist I

Job summary: As a Senior Staff Data Scientist, you will lead the development of data science and machine learning solutions that power advertising across digital commerce experiences. You will work on problems spanning ad relevance and ranking, targeting, click-through and conversion prediction, campaign optimization, forecasting, and advertiser performance. The role involves leveraging large-scale behavioural, transactional, catalogue, and advertising data to improve how ads are selected, ranked, delivered, and optimized across the customer journey. You will also explore applications of Generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to improve contextual understanding, advertiser tooling, campaign creation, and optimization. As a senior contributor, you will help shape the data science strategy for Retail Ads, drive complex initiatives from problem formulation through production deployment, and influence the evolution of the advertising platform through measurable business outcomes. About the Team: Jio Hotstar is building an advertising platform that enables commerce-led advertising across large-scale digital consumer businesses. The team sits at the intersection of Ad Tech, e-commerce, data, machine learning, and monetisation. We build capabilities that help commerce platforms unlock high-intent advertising opportunities across the shopping journey - from discovery and search to product consideration and purchase - while helping advertisers reach relevant customers and drive measurable outcomes. The team works on a broad range of advertising formats and experiences, including sponsored product, search, display, and personalised advertising, with a focus on relevance, performance, scalability, and advertiser value. Key Responsibilities Analyze large-scale behavioural, transactional, catalogue, campaign, and advertising datasets to identify patterns and opportunities that inform product and monetisation strategy. Design, develop, and productionize machine learning and statistical models for problems such as ad relevance and ranking, CTR/CVR prediction, targeting, campaign optimization, forecasting, and advertiser performance. Build models and optimization techniques that improve the selection, ranking, and delivery of ads while balancing user relevance, advertiser outcomes, and platform monetisation objectives. Develop data-driven approaches to understand shopping intent, product and category affinity, contextual relevance, and customer behaviour across commerce journeys. Explore and apply Generative AI and LLMs to areas such as contextual understanding, campaign creation, advertiser recommendations, creative intelligence, and automated optimization. Lead complex data science initiatives from problem formulation and experimentation through production deployment, establishing strong modelling, evaluation, monitoring, and release practices. Design and execute experiments and A/B tests to evaluate algorithmic improvements and quantify their impact on user experience, advertiser performance, and business outcomes. Partner closely with Engineering, Product, Data Engineering, Ad Tech, and Business teams to translate ambiguous business problems into scalable data science solutions. Continuously evaluate data quality, model performance, bias, robustness, and drift, and establish mechanisms to maintain reliable model performance at scale. Skills and attributes for success: Proven experience in data science and machine learning preferably in Ad Tech or related industries Strong proficiency in Python, SQL, and relevant data science libraries (Pandas, Scikit-learn, Tensor Flow, Py Torch, etc.) Expertise in building and deploying machine learning models into production systems Experience with big data technologies (e.g., Hadoop, Spark) and cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Google Cloud) Deep understanding of statistical analysis, machine learning, data mining, and predictive modeling techniques Should be comfortable leveraging LLMs and internals Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to translate business problems into data science solutions Preferred education and experience: Master's or Ph D in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or related quantitative field with 10+ years of experience in data science/machine learning About Us: Perched firmly at the nucleus of spellbinding content and innovative technology, Jio Star is a leading global media & entertainment company that is reimagining the way audiences consume entertainment and sports. Its television network and streaming service together reach more than 750 million viewers every week, igniting the dreams and aspirations of hundreds of million people across geographies. Jio Star is an equal opportunity employer. The company values diversity and its mission is to create a workplace where everyone can bring their authentic selves to work. The company ensures that the work environment is free from any discrimination against persons with disabilities, gender, gender identity and any other characteristics or status that is legally protected. Perched firmly at the nucleus of spellbinding content and innovative technology, Jio Star is a leading global media & entertainment company that is reimagining the way audiences consume entertainment and sports. Its television network and streaming service together reach more than 750 million viewers every week, igniting the dreams and aspirations of hundreds of million people across geographies. Jio Star India Private Limited (formerly known as Star India Private Limited) is an equal opportunity employer. The company values diversity and its mission is to create a workplace where everyone can bring their authentic selves to work. The company ensures that the work environment is free from any discrimination against persons with disabilities, gender, gender identity and any other characteristics or status that is legally protected.