Staff Machine Learning Scientist – AdTech

Nykaa; Bengaluru Urban; On-site; INR 4,500,000 - 8,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Nykaa’s AdTech Data Science team leads ML-powered advertising products including Sponsored Products, Display Ads, and Creative Personalization. The Staff MLS role focuses on building foundational ML models and scalable systems for Nykaa’s ad platform in India.

You will work cross-functionally with product and engineering to solve high-impact problems, deploying cutting-edge models and exploring reinforcement learning, LLMs, and generative AI for advertiser support and campaign optimization.

Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Ph.D. in Computer Science, ML, Statistics, or related technical field.
• 7+ years of experience building production-grade ML systems, with 5+ years in AdTech or large-scale recommender systems.
• Deep expertise in CTR/CVR prediction, ranking, bidding dynamics, multi-objective optimization, and generative AI for ads.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop models for predicting ad outcomes, bidding decisions, budget pacing, and SKU/ad selection.
• Build automation systems for campaign management that adapt in real-time to feedback.
• Develop generative models to optimize ad creatives and user engagement across formats.
• Own core components like model pipelines, simulation frameworks, and personalization layers.
• Drive research into long-term value modeling, multi-touch attribution, and campaign lifecycle optimization.

Skills

Production-grade ML systems

Senior IC / technical leadership

AdTech / recommender systems

MLOps / model deployment

A/B testing design

Reinforcement Learning / RLHF

Education

Bachelor’s/Master’s/PhD in CS/ML/Statistics

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

XGBoost

LightGBM

Scikit-learn

PySpark

SQL

Job description

Nykaa’s AdTech Data Science team is at the forefront of building intelligent, ML-powered advertising products including Sponsored Products, Display Ads, and Creative Personalization. We aim to serve highly relevant, personalized ads to millions of users while maximizing advertiser success through scalable, automated systems. In this Staff MLS role, you will be a hands-on technical leader—driving the development of foundational ML models and systems that fuel our ad platform. You’ll work closely with product, engineering, and business teams to define and solve high-impact problems in advertising science.

What Are We Looking For?

Education: Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or a related technical field from a reputable institution.

Experience:

• 7+ years of experience building production-grade ML systems, with 5+ years specifically in AdTech, performance marketing, or large-scale recommender systems.
• Proven track record of delivering impactful ML innovations as a senior individual contributor, from ideation to deployment.
• Deep expertise in one or more of the following domains:
• CTR/CVR prediction, ranking, bidding dynamics, bid/budget optimization
• Generative AI for creative optimization, personalization, or agentic workflows

Technical Skills:

• Strong understanding of:
• Learning-to-Rank
• Bandits and exploration strategies
• Representation learning / embeddings
• Auction systems and ads marketplaces
• Multi-objective optimization
• real-time inference, latency-sensitive model serving, and model monitoring in production environments.
• Fluency in Python and ML frameworks like PyTorch, TensorFlow, XGBoost, and libraries like LightGBM, Scikit-learn.
• Expertise in large-scale data processing with PySpark, SQL etc..
• Experience with Strong command of A/B testing design, incrementality measurement, and online experimentation in AdTech systems.

Responsibilities:

ML Development & Deployment:

• Design and develop cutting-edge models for predicting ad outcomes, bidding decisions, budget pacing, and SKU/ad selection.
• Build intelligent automation systems for campaign management that adapt in real-time to advertiser and platform feedback.
• Develop generative models to optimize ad creatives and improve user engagement across formats.
• Own the architecture of core components like model pipelines, simulation frameworks, and personalization layers within the ad platform.
• Drive research into long-term value modeling, multi-touch attribution, and campaign lifecycle optimization.

Cross-Functional Impact:

• Collaborate with Product and Engineering to design features that are ML-first and measurable.
• Act as the primary technical stakeholder for experimentation, metrics design, and long-term roadmap planning.

Thought Leadership & Innovation:

• Explore and prototype novel approaches using Reinforcement Learning, RLHF, contrastive learning, or LLMs for advertiser assistance or campaign agents.
• Publish internal whitepapers or contribute to external publications and IP generation when applicable.
• Be a key technical architect behind Nykaa’s growing AdTech ecosystem.
• Work on cutting-edge problems that intersect ML, economics, personalization, and creative optimization.
• Shape the future of advertising in India’s leading beauty and lifestyle platform—with a strong focus on user delight and advertiser success.