Applied Scientist II

The Trade Desk; Toronto; On-site; CAD 97,000 - 178,000; Full time

Job summary

The Trade Desk is a global technology company and the world’s leading independent platform for digital advertising. We develop algorithms for our real-time bidding platform and train deep learning models to run at scale, handling trillions of queries daily.

Our team emphasizes openness, ownership, and collaboration across time zones. This role is based in Ontario and eligible for stock-based compensation grants.

Qualifications

• BS/MS in Mathematics, Computer Science, Statistics or related field.
• PhD with industry experience is a plus.
• Experience in bringing products from ideation to production.

Responsibilities

• Design, research, build, and deliver data-focused products for clients.
• Work with engineering throughout the lifecycle from ideation to productionalization and monitoring.
• Join a team that builds and shares knowledge to raise the bar for others.

Skills

Deep learning

Python

SQL

Spark

PyTorch

EMR

Databricks

Scala

containerization

version control

ads KPI modeling

Education

BS/MS in Mathematics, Computer Science, Statistics

PhD (optional)

Tools

Spark

EMR

Databricks

Ray

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

The Trade Desk is a global technology company and the world’s leading independent platform for digital advertising, with nearly 4,000 employees across more than 30 offices. Our technology helps advertisers reach the right audiences across the open internet — from streaming TV and podcasts to mobile apps, news, and more.

Advertising powers the content people love. By making it more transparent, effective, and responsible, we help support trusted journalism, quality entertainment, and creators worldwide. The world’s brands and agencies rely on us to reach their customers and grow their businesses responsibly.

The scale of our platform brings unique technical challenges — from processing massive datasets in real time to building systems that operate reliably on a global scale. When you work here, your impact is worldwide. We welcome diverse perspectives, encourage curiosity, and build teams that learn from one another. If you’re driven to solve meaningful challenges, we’d love to meet you.

The Trade Desk is a global technology company with a mission to create a better, more open internet for everyone through principled, intelligent advertising. Handling over 1 trillion queries per day, our platform operates at an unprecedented scale. We have also built something even stronger and more valuable: an award-winning culture based on trust, ownership, empathy, and collaboration. We value the unique experiences and perspectives that each person brings to The Trade Desk, and we are committed to fostering inclusive spaces where everyone can bring their authentic selves to work every day.

Do you have a passion for solving hard problems at scale? Are you eager to join a dynamic, globally-connected team where your contributions will make a meaningful difference in building a better media ecosystem? Come and see why Fortune magazine consistently ranks The Trade Desk among the best small-medium-sized workplaces globally.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Our team is responsible for developing algorithms that run in our real time bidding platform with the ultimate goal of helping thousands of customers run effective advertising campaigns. Many of our problems involve getting deep learning algorithms to train and inference at scale. Some of the challenges include sparse and/or noisy labels and data, large output space (thousands of labels), millisecond latency requirements, high QPS requirements (thousands or millions per second), and unreliable ground truth.

Applied Scientists on our team work closely with engineering throughout the lifecycle of the product, from ideation to productionalization and monitoring.

Our Applied Scientists are end-to-end owners. You will participate actively in all aspects of designing, researching, building, and delivering data-focused products for our clients.

We are a team built on a foundation of generosity and openness, and we expect our data scientists to help make others better and raise the bar for those around them. As a Data Scientist, you will contribute meaningfully through leading others.

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR

• You have a sustained track record of making significant,self-directed, and end-to-end contributions to complex, multi-layered, impactful machine learning
• You think beyond just the task at hand to deeply understand the 'why' behind what you are doing and anticipate problems that may be several degrees removed from obvious requirements.
• You make your team better by proactively advocating for and driving improvements not just to what the team produces, but also the ways in which the team works.
• You have a strong sense of data intuition. At our scale, many off-the-shelf modeling techniques (open source and enterprise) simply don't work. You are able to work from first principles to develop solutions and adapt them to a unique environment.
• You are a broadly skilled data scientist with deep expertise working with embedded models in always-onproduction systems and working across a variety of technologies and data sources.
• You have a product-focused mindset. You have the passion and ability to contribute to the process of discovering what will delight our clients and push forward one of the world’s largest and most influential industries toward a vision of openness, transparency, and evidence-based decision-making.
• You work with confidence and without ego. Our data scientists have deep knowledge and exercise a high degree of leadership in their daily work. You have strongly-held, defensible ideas, and advocate for what you believe is right. You are also adept at identifying and evaluating trade-offs, willing to be proven wrong, and quick to support your fellow teammates.
• You value, seek out, and foster diversity. We are a global team from many diverse backgrounds, with different experiences and perspectives. To complement this team, you will welcome ideas that are different from your own and be skilled at finding and building from common ground.
• You are a creative thinker, not bound by "the way things have always been done." What you know is less important than how well you learn and innovate. We don't need data scientists who know all the answers; we need data scientists who can invent the answers no one has thought of yet, to the questions yet to be asked.
• You have an abundance of intellectual curiosity and are enthusiastic to learn (and teach) new technologies / techniques.
• You are you comfortable working on an agile, distributed team spanning multiple time zones and continents.
• You are able to communicate effectively across both technical and non-technical audiences.

WHAT YOU BRING TO THE TABLE

We do not expect you to know every technology we use when you start at TTD. What we care most about is that you can learn quickly and solve complex problems using the best tools for the job. However, we find that the most successful candidates typically come in with something like the following experience:

• BS/MS in Mathematics, Computer Science, Statistics, or a related quantitative field with 3+ years of full-time industry experience, or a PhD with 2+ years of full-time industry experience, in a role that involves bringing products from ideation to production.
• Experience in deep learning, Pytoch preferred.
• Experience running heavy workloads on a distributed computing cluster (especially EMR or Databricks), leveraging technologies like Spark to work with large datasets is preferred
• Proficient in Python, Scala, and SQL; hands‑on experience with Spark, EMR and Ray.
• Proficient in software engineering concepts like containerization and version control is preferred.
• Experience with ads, recommendation systems or KPI optimization modeling is a plus; large-scale advertising platforms and lift modeling (conversion lift, brand lift) experience strongly preferred.

Ontario residents only: In accordance with Ontario law, the range provided is The Trade Desk's reasonable estimate of the base compensation for this role. The actual amount may differ based on non-discriminatory factors such as experience, knowledge, skills, abilities, and location. All employees may be eligible to become The Trade Desk shareholders through eligibility for stock‑based compensation grants, which are awarded to employees based on company and individual performance. The Trade Desk also offers other compensation depending on the role such as variable compensation-based incentives and commissions.

At the Trade Desk, Base Salary is one part of our competitive total compensation and benefits package and is determined using a salary range. The base salary range for this role is $96,840—$177,540 CAD

As an Equal Opportunity Employer, The Trade Desk is committed to creating an inclusive hiring experience where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

Please reach out to us at [e-mail] to request an accommodation or discuss any accessibility needs you may require to access our Company Website or navigate any part of the hiring process. When you contact us, please include your preferred contact details and specify the nature of your accommodation request or questions. Any information you share will be handled confidentially and will not impact our hiring decisions.