Lead Data Scientist - Search & Recommendation

Gojek Group; Singapore; On-site; SGD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Gojek Group in Singapore is seeking a Lead Data Scientist for the Search & Recommendations Platform to design and deploy advanced retrieval and ranking models powering GoFood and GoPay systems.

You will build embeddings, multi-task ranking, and personalised layers, integrating real-time signals and multi-modal data while leveraging LLMs/LLVMs to enhance knowledge tagging.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree or higher in CS/ML/NLP/CV.
• Strong programming skills in Python, C++, or Java.
• Experience building large-scale ranking or recommender systems.
• Familiar with LLMs/LLVMs and integrating them into pipelines.
• Strong product intuition and data-driven decision making.

Responsibilities

• Design and optimise hybrid lexical–semantic retrieval pipelines.
• Build embeddings and relevance signals for user intent and dishes.
• Develop multi-task deep ranking models balancing conversions and retention.
• Build personalised ranking layers and user behaviour models.
• Engineer recommendation algorithms using collaborative filtering and graph methods.
• Advance embedding quality for multi-modal data and use LLMs for knowledge tagging.
• Incorporate taxonomy signals and knowledge graphs into pipelines.

Skills

Python

C++

Java

Large language models (LLMs)

Ranking systems

Education

Master’s degree in Computer Science, ML, NLP, CV, or related field

Tools

BM25

HNSW/LSH

Dense vectors

Job description

Lead Data Scientist - Search & Recommendation

About the Role

As an algorithm expert on the Search and Recommendations Platform team, you will work alongside top talent in Singapore, China, Indonesia, and India to shape the intelligence behind GoFood and GoPay systems. You will design and deploy cutting‑edge search, recommendations, and monetisation models that power on‑demand and financial use cases across Indonesia. In your first six months, you will play a key role in launching foundational platform capabilities and collaborating with business‑facing data science teams, to drive business impact and improve user experience.

If you are passionate about applying advanced algorithms to deliver real business outcomes, this is one of the highest‑leverage roles in the company.

What You Will Do

• Design and optimise hybrid lexical–semantic retrieval pipelines (e.g., BM25, dense vectors, HNSW/LSH, generative retrieval) to improve precision and recall across GoFood and GoPay surfaces.
• Build high‑quality embeddings and relevance signals that capture user intent, cuisine and dish semantics, geolocation, delivery constraints, price sensitivity, and promotions.
• Develop multi‑task deep ranking models that balance conversion, diversity, merchant quality, and long‑term user retention, integrating real‑time signals such as promotions, surge, and stock availability.
• Build personalised ranking layers and user behaviour models leveraging historical orders, preferences, and contextual features.
• Engineer recommendation algorithms using collaborative filtering, graph‑based methods, and sequence models for retrieval expansion (e.g., Q2Q2I, Q2I2I, U2I), including for cold‑start merchants and new dishes.
• Advance embedding quality for multi‑modal data (text, images, behavioural signals) and use LLMs to enhance structured knowledge (taxonomy tagging, dish attributes, dietary labels).
• Incorporate structured metadata, taxonomy signals, and knowledge‑graph features into retrieval and ranking pipelines to improve semantic understanding and consistency.

What You Will Need

• Master’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Machine Learning, NLP, CV, or a related field; strong programming skills in Python, C++, or Java.
• Hands‑on experience building large‑scale ranking or recommendation systems in consumer products (ecommerce, food delivery, rideshare, ads, streaming, social).
• Familiarity with LLMs and/or LLVMs. Experience integrating them into search or recommendation pipelines is a strong plus.
• Demonstrated ability to innovate with new algorithms or tools and drive measurable impact, especially making use of Large language Models (LLMs) and Large Language and Vision models (LLVMs) in search or recommendation modeling.
• Strong product intuition and ability to reason from user behavior data and traffic patterns.
• Good communication skills in English, both written and verbal. Bonus points if you can understand Bahasa Indonesia.
• Self‑motivated, curious, and excited by the opportunity to build high‑impact systems quickly.

About the Team

We’re a growing team of algorithm members and engineers spread across Singapore, China, Indonesia, and India. We build the core search and recommendation platform capabilities to power use cases all across the GoTo universe. Everyone on the team shares a bias towards action and a passion for deploying models and strategies to real‑world problems – whether it’s improving ranking and relevance accuracy, scaling LLM‑powered retrieval, or personalising customer journeys.

We believe algorithm and engine application is a team sport. We work openly, challenge ideas with curiosity, and support one another to build systems that move the business forward

Gojek is Southeast Asia's leading on‑demand platform and a pioneer of the multi‑service ecosystem model, providing access to a wide range of services including transportation, food delivery, logistics and more.