Research Scientist 5 — Content Representation Models (CRM)

Netflix; Los Gatos (CA); On-site; USD 466,000 - 750,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Plans

401(k) Retirement Plan

Flexible time off

Job summary

Netflix is seeking a Research Scientist specializing in embeddings and representation learning to improve content understanding for its foundation models. The role involves applying state-of-the-art AI techniques and requires a Ph.D. in Computer Science. Your research will influence how 300M+ members discover content through enhanced personalization.

The position offers competitive compensation between $466,000.00 and $750,000.00 annually and includes comprehensive benefits such as health plans and flexible time off.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. with strong publication record in embeddings or related domain.
• 3+ years of research experience.
• Deep expertise in machine learning and foundation models.

Responsibilities

• Drive applied research on content understanding.
• Implement and validate new representation learning approaches.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams.

Skills

Machine learning

Python

Representation learning

LLMs

Communication

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science or related field

Tools

PyTorch

Job description

At Netflix, our mission is to entertain the world. Together, we are writing the next episode – pushing the boundaries of storytelling, global fandom, and making the unimaginable a reality. We are a dream team obsessed with the uncomfortable excitement of discovering what happens when you merge creativity, intuition, and cutting‑edge technology. Come be a part of what’s next.

About the Team

The Content Representation Models team creates a single, unified “language” for Netflix’s entire library by developing foundation models that understand everything from video and audio to text and artwork at a semantic level. By treating these powerful embeddings as a core product, we give Netflix the ability to match the right content to the right member, supercharging personalization and helping everyone discover something they’ll love.

The team’s current areas of focus include:

• Unified Content Embedding: Merging media‑based and metadata‑based embedding approaches into a single cohesive model, creating rich semantic representations of all content across video, audio, and text modalities
• Multimodal and Multi‑Granularity Embeddings: Creating embeddings from various content types at different levels of detail, from entire shows down to individual shots and clips
• Semantic IDs: Developing unique, meaningful identifiers for content that enable more sophisticated retrieval and recommendation
• Profile and Content Embedding Alignment: Aligning member profile embeddings with content embeddings in the same space to enhance personalization

About the Role

We are looking for a Research Scientist specializing in embeddings and representation learning to investigate how we can enhance content understanding capability in Netflix’s foundation models. How foundation models understand content is one of the most important open research questions for Netflix personalization. Today, our models rely on a mix of metadata, behavioral signals, and media‑based representations. The opportunity ahead is to significantly deepen that understanding through approaches like Semantic IDs, continuous pre‑training, novel representation learning methods, or other state‑of‑the‑art techniques.

The person in this role will help shape that research direction and bring new ideas to the table. This is an area where the optimal strategy is still being defined, which means there is real room to influence the approach and make a lasting impact on how Netflix’s foundation models reason about content.

What Makes This Role Unique

• Open research problem with real product impact. Enhancing how foundation models understand content is a crucial and unsolved challenge. Your work will directly improve how 300M+ members discover content.
• Research that ships. This isn’t a pure research lab. Your work will feed into foundation models that power personalization across every Netflix surface. The loop between research and member impact is tight.
• Bring your own approach. We have hypotheses (Semantic IDs, continuous pre‑training, etc.) but we’re looking for someone who brings their own perspective and methods to the problem.
• World‑class collaborators. You will work alongside researchers and engineers across content understanding, foundation models, and application teams who are pushing the state of the art in personalization at scale.

Responsibilities

• Drive applied research on enhancing content understanding capability in Netflix’s foundation models
• Conceptualize, design, implement, and validate new approaches to representation learning and content embeddings
• Explore and apply state‑of‑the‑art AI/ML techniques, including methods for improving how LLMs and foundation models represent and reason about content
• Develop production‑ready solutions and partner with application teams to ensure research translates into member‑facing impact
• Design and run rigorous offline experiments and evaluations to validate new approaches
• Collaborate with cross‑functional teams across content understanding, foundation models, and personalization applications
• Contribute to the broader research community through publications at top venues

What We’re Looking For

Must‑haves

• Ph.D. in Computer Science or a related field with a strong publication record in embeddings, representation learning, or a closely related domain
• 3+ years of research experience with a track record of delivering quality results
• Deep expertise in machine learning, including practical experience with LLMs and/or foundation models
• Strong software engineering skills in Python (e.g., PyTorch)
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills

Nice‑to‑haves

• Experience in adopting LLM for Recsys, more specifically, building Semantic IDs and grounding them in LLMs
• Experience in computer vision or multimodal AI
• Industry experience in recommendation systems, search, personalization, or retrieval
• Experience with LLM pre‑training, fine‑tuning, or distillation
• Hands‑on experience with distributed training
• Publications in top ML conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, KDD, RecSys)
• Applied research experience in industrial settings

Generally, our compensation structure consists solely of an annual salary; we do not have bonuses. You choose each year how much of your compensation you want in salary versus stock options. To determine your personal top‑of‑market compensation, we rely on market indicators and consider your specific job family, background, skills, and experience to determine your compensation in the market range. The range for this role is $466,000.00–$750,000.00.

Netflix provides comprehensive benefits including Health Plans, Mental Health support, a 401(k) Retirement Plan with employer match, Stock Option Program, Disability Programs, Health Savings and Flexible Spending Accounts, Family‑forming benefits, and Life and Serious Injury Benefits. We also offer paid leave of absence programs. Full‑time hourly employees accrue 35 days annually for paid time off to be used for vacation, holidays, and sick paid time off. Full‑time salaried employees are immediately entitled to flexible time off.

We are an equal‑opportunity employer and celebrate diversity, recognizing that diversity builds stronger teams. We approach diversity and inclusion seriously and thoughtfully. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service.