Applied Researcher 3 - Staff

eBay Inc.; Toronto; Hybrid; CAD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

eBay Inc. is seeking a Staff Applied Researcher to advance visual and multimodal AI across the Global Focus Categories. You will research, train, fine-tune, evaluate, and deploy foundation-model-based systems at scale, collaborating with product, engineering and analytics teams.

You will lead ambiguous problems, mentor researchers, and influence technical direction while shaping production-grade AI solutions for personalized experiences and marketplace understanding.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. or M.S. in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Machine Learning, Applied Mathematics, or a related technical field with a focus on computer vision, multimodal AI, or artificial intelligence
• PhD + 3 or more years of experience OR MS + 4 year of experience building computer vision and/or multimodal systems for large-scale applications
• Hands-on experience training, fine-tuning, evaluating, and deploying visual-language models or other modern foundation-model-based systems, including adapting these models to specialized applications and problem domains
• Demonstrated expertise in scalable machine learning infrastructure, distributed training, model serving, and production monitoring, with extensive experience leveraging PySpark, SQL, and Hadoop for large-scale data processing
• Strong proficiency in Python and modern machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow, with fluency in agentic coding and AI-assisted development workflows
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with a demonstrated ability to influence senior cross-functional stakeholders and collaborate effectively across research, engineering, and product organizations

Responsibilities

• Develop and deploy visual and multimodal machine learning models for large-scale applications involving fine-grained recognition, visual understanding, content intelligence, retrieval, and decisioning
• Design and optimize end-to-end training and inference pipelines for modern AI systems, including orchestration of multiple models and services in production environments
• Advance core capabilities in classical and modern vision and multimodal problem spaces such as detection, segmentation, classification, metric and contrastive learning, and visual-language modelling
• Lead research initiatives focused on visual perception technologies and multimodal artificial intelligence
• Identify gaps in which existing models are insufficient
• Develop innovative strategies and adapt foundation models for specific domain problems
• Lead research and development in VLM training and fine-tuning, model distillation, reinforcement learning, and other components of the modern AI stack
• Partner closely with product managers, engineers, designers, and applied scientists to translate ambiguous business opportunities into robust technical roadmaps and delivered solutions
• Communicate technical direction, trade-offs, and results clearly to cross-functional stakeholders, including director-level leaders, to drive alignment and informed decision-making
• Mentor junior and senior team members, raise the technical bar for experimentation and production excellence, and contribute to a strong research and engineering culture

Skills

Python

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Distributed training

SQL

Education

Ph.D. in CS/EE/ML or related field

M.S. in CS/ML + 4+ years experience

Tools

PySpark

Hadoop

Job description

At eBay, we're more than a global ecommerce leader—we’re changing the way the world shops and sells. Our platform empowers millions of buyers and sellers in more than 190 markets around the world. We’re committed to pushing boundaries and leaving our mark as we reinvent the future of ecommerce for enthusiasts. Our customers are our compass, authenticity thrives, bold ideas are welcome, and everyone can bring their unique selves to work—every day. We're in this together, sustaining the future of our customers, our company, and our planet. Join a team of passionate thinkers, innovators, and dreamers—and help us connect people and build communities to create economic opportunity for all.

Hybrid role, requires you to be in our Toronto office 3 days

About the role and the team

In the role of Applied Researcher 3 within the Global Focus Categories on the Applied Science team, you will develop new computer vision and multi-input AI solutions. These solutions will address complex problems across eBay’s global marketplace. Our team focuses on challenges where current models and off-the-shelf methods fall short. We adapt and extend groundbreaking foundation models to solve specialized, domain‑specific problems at scale. The team works at the intersection of applied research, image and multimodal intelligence, and large‑scale machine learning systems. You will work across a continually evolving portfolio of projects and areas of challenge rather than specializing in a single application area. Work has spanned personalized experiences and recommendations, content intelligence and attribute extraction, fine‑grained visual recognition, anomaly detection, and multimodal understanding of marketplace inventory. Each problem brings different data, modeling, and system challenges, creating opportunities to explore new approaches and develop capabilities where established solutions fall short. As a Staff level Applied Researcher, you will take problems from early investigation to production. You will research, build, train, fine‑tune, evaluate, and deploy models and AI systems at scale. Collaborate with advanced image and multimodal core models. Develop specialized architectures, training approaches, data strategies, evaluation methods, and supporting systems to adapt them for challenging real‑world applications. As the Staff Applied Researcher on the team, your role includes helping develop the technical direction and identifying new opportunities for applied research. You will lead ambiguous problems from initial investigation through production impact, influence senior technical and product collaborators, and mentor researchers across the team.

What you will accomplish

• Develop and deploy visual and multimodal machine learning models for large‑scale applications involving fine‑grained recognition, visual understanding, content intelligence, retrieval, and decisioning.
• Design and optimize end‑to‑end training and inference pipelines for modern AI systems, including orchestration of multiple models and services in production environments.
• Advance core capabilities in classical and modern vision and multimodal problem spaces such as detection, segmentation, classification, metric and contrastive learning, and visual‑language modelin.
• Lead research initiatives focused on visual perception technologies and multimodal artificial intelligence.
• Identify gaps in which existing models are insufficient.
• Develop innovative strategies and adapt foundation models for specific domain problems.
• Lead research and development in VLM training and fine‑tuning, model distillation, reinforcement learning, and other components of the modern AI stack.
• Partner closely with product managers, engineers, designers, and applied scientists to translate ambiguous business opportunities into robust technical roadmaps and delivered solutions.
• Communicate technical direction, trade‑offs, and results clearly to cross‑functional stakeholders, including director‑level leaders, to drive alignment and informed decision‑making.
• Mentor junior and senior team members, raise the technical bar for experimentation and production excellence, and contribute to a strong research and engineering culture.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. or M.S. in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Machine Learning, Applied Mathematics, or a related technical field with a focus on computer vision, multimodal AI, or artificial intelligence
• PhD + 3 or more years of experience OR M.S. + 4 year of experience building computer vision and/or multimodal systems for large‑scale applications
• Hands‑on experience training, fine‑tuning, evaluating, and deploying visual‑language models or other modern foundation‑model‑based systems, including adapting these models to specialized applications and problem domains
• Demonstrated expertise in scalable machine learning infrastructure, distributed training, model serving, and production monitoring, with extensive experience leveraging PySpark, SQL, and Hadoop for large‑scale data processing
• Strong proficiency in Python and modern machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow, with fluency in agentic coding and AI‑assisted development workflows
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with a demonstrated ability to influence senior cross‑functional stakeholders and collaborate effectively across research, engineering, and product organizations

Additional Details

This job posting relates to an existing vacancy within eBay. eBay is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability, or other legally protected status. If you have a need that requires accommodation, please contact us at [e-mail]. We will make every effort to respond to your request for accommodation as soon as possible. View our accessibility statement to learn more about eBay's commitment to ensuring digital accessibility. We use cookies to enhance your experience and may use AI tools for administrative tasks in the hiring process. To learn how we handle your personal data and use AI responsibly, please visit our Talent Privacy Notice, Privacy Center, and AI Hiring Guidelines. We Empower People and Create Economic Opportunity eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) is a global commerce leader that connects millions of buyers and sellers around the world. We exist to enable economic opportunity for individuals, entrepreneurs, businesses and organizations of all sizes.