Senior Applied AI Developer

SSENSE is a global technology platform operating at the intersection of culture, community, and commerce. Headquartered in Montreal, it features a mix of established and emerging luxury brands across womenswear, menswear, kidswear, and Everything Else™. SSENSE has garnered critical acclaim as both an e-commerce engine and a producer of cultural content, generating an average of 100 million monthly page views.

We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated Senior Applied AI Developer to join our innovative team. This role is crucial for transforming complex AI research into practical, scalable, and high-impact business solutions. A successful candidate will combine deep technical expertise with a strong product mindset and business acumen to deliver best-in-class AI experiences.

The role is focused on driving measurable business outcomes through AI, with time allocation in development (50%), strategy (30%), and research (20%).

What You Will Do:

• AI System Development & Maintenance: Build, integrate, and maintain performant AI systems and models that are deployed in production.
• Scalable Architecture: Architect and implement robust, scalable, and efficient pipelines for deploying AI models into production environments.
• Model Lifecycle Ownership: Own the entire model development lifecycle, including versioning, monitoring, retraining, latency optimization, and observability.
• Business Translation & Strategy: Translate complex business needs into clear, measurable, and AI-powered solutions, ensuring technology aligns with strategic business goals.
• Innovation & Prototyping: Push the boundaries of innovation by designing and building state-of-the-art pipelines, such as retrieval-augmented, multimodal, or generative systems.

Requirements:

• Education: Master’s or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Data Science, or a related technical field.
• Experience: 5+ years of professional experience in applied machine learning or AI engineering, with a documented record of production-level impact.
• Production Deployment: Proven track record of successfully deploying advanced ML and Deep Learning models (e.g., LLMs, vision, or recommender systems) from a prototype stage to large-scale production.
• MLOps Expertise: Expertise in designing and implementing scalable, low-latency MLOps pipelines and model-serving architectures.
• Cloud Proficiency: Deep, hands-on experience managing AI workloads on major cloud platforms (AWS preferred) using modern MLOps practices.
• Domain Knowledge: Background in e-commerce or retail AI applications, such as personalization, search, or dynamic pricing, is an asset.

What Sets You Apart:

• Business & Product Acumen: Strong business acumen to understand the commercial impact of AI solutions, prioritize features based on potential impact, and a solid product mindset to advocate for the user experience.
• Advanced AI Systems: Deep practical experience implementing and optimizing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems.
• LLM Proficiency: Expertise in working with commercial or open-source Large Language Models (LLMs).
• Model Optimization: Hands-on experience with fine-tuning neural networks (e.g., transfer learning) for specific applications and optimizing models for production inference.

Why Join Us:

• Extended health and dental benefits, including comprehensive mental health programs and coverage
• Parental top up program
• Generous Employee Discount 
• Access to telemedicine and employee and family assistance program
• Savings and retirement plan matching contributions
• Gender Affirmation Coverage 
• Opportunity to work with cutting edge technologies and an innovative team that’s pushing the boundaries of technology

SSENSE is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. If you need special accommodations, let us know. We will do our best to accommodate you!

#LI-Hybrid, Hybrid remote/in-office