Junior Applied Scientist, ML

About the  Role:

The Sama R&D team is focused on delivering integrated solutions solving the most complex ML problems for our customers. We use advanced practices to build scalable, secure, and efficient solutions covering multiple aspects of ML and AI, from data ingestion to annotation and building and operating ML models. 

As an Applied ML Scientist, you will work with our team of talented Researchers, Engineers, and over 3,000 of our Annotation Associates in East Africa to advance the Sama annotation platform, empowering our customers and Annotators to rapidly and accurately identify and extract features in images, videos, and Lidar systems. With a commitment to your customer and driven by a mission to expand opportunities for low-income people, you will use your outstanding research and development skills to deliver compelling solutions in an incremental, lean, and self-driven environment.

Our ideal candidate has a strong knowledge foundation in machine learning and is comfortable prototyping and productizing ML technology. As part of our AI team, you will play a key role in improving the core ML technology powering our advanced data curation and annotation platforms.

Responsibilities:

• You will be responsible for developing and productizing our technology to analyze, characterize and process images, videos, textual information and Lidar point clouds. 
• You will support our machine learning technology offering, from research to productization.
• Through proper implementation and delivery, you will work collaboratively with Product Management and other ML scientists and engineers to deliver the best products and solutions to our customers.

Minimum qualifications:

• Postgraduate degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
• Research experience in machine learning, computer vision, or large language models.
• Experience with data annotation and preparation.
• Experience with deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow or PyTorch.

Preferred qualifications:

• Contribution to research communities and/or efforts, including publishing papers at conferences such as NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, ICLR, etc.
• Familiarity with ML Ops and software engineering, in general.
• Comfortable working with a distributed team.

About Sama 

Sama provides high-quality training data that powers AI technology for Fortune 2000 companies such as Google, Walmart, Ford, Microsoft, and Marriott. We’re experts in data annotation, supporting text, 2D, 3D image, video, and sensor data for machine learning algorithms and generative AI models. Sama offers the highest quality SLAs in the industry, along with cutting-edge ML-assisted annotation tools, QA processes, and security and compliance standards.

Founded in 2008 on the belief that “talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not”, Sama is driven by the mission to expand opportunities for those who are underprivileged. As a certified B-Corp, Sama has provided worker training programs to increase economic opportunity for more than 15,000 people from underserved communities. By connecting our customers with amazing talent in East Africa, we've impacted more than 69,000 workers and their dependents.

Today, our vision is to provide data scientists, ML engineers, and data operations teams with an indispensable, integrated platform for AI data preparation, labeling, and collection. 

For more information, visit www.sama.com.

More information can be found at:

• Featured in Forbes: How Ethical Is Your AI?
• Sama Honored on Inc. Magazine’s Annual List of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies — the Inc. 5000
• Reversing Poverty - Ted Talk by our founder Leila Janah

Our Culture:

Sama is quite unique. We are a technology company with a social mission. People that thrive in a high-growth environment, love working on the bleeding edge of technology, and really care about having a positive impact on the world are a great fit for the Sama culture. Our core values are One Team, One Goal - Deliver. Period. - Trust & Transparency - Customer First - Humanity.

Our Benefits:

Sama is proud to offer competitive compensation corresponding to market data & level of experience. Sama also offers benefits packages based on country of employment, including but not limited to medical, dental, vision, and life insurance, holiday and vacation policies, professional development stipends and a paid sabbatical program. Our Talent Acquisition team would be happy to discuss our benefits packages with you in more detail during the interview process.

At Sama, we pride ourselves in being a diverse and equal opportunity employer.