Machine Learning Consultant

Sony Research India is driving cutting-edge research and development in various locations around the globe, including laboratories in Japan, the United States, Europe, and Asia. We endeavor to create new technology, products, and services while sustaining Sony Group’s diverse businesses in electronics, entertainment, and financial fields. For our research centre to blaze a trail in the latest technologies, we seek to foster the growth of a diverse pool of research and engineering talent and create a technology talent bank to drive research excellence worldwide. Sony Research India is offering outstanding career opportunities around frontline technologies such as AI and data analytics.

We are looking for a highly motivated research consultant who can assist in our research and development efforts on large-scale user engagement predictive models. The ideal candidate should have prior experience in Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing.

Key Responsibility:

• Developing models to analyze user behavior patterns on OTT platforms and predicting their likelihood of leaving, along with plausible reasons behind their behavior.

• Building causal inference–based intervention models aimed at retaining users on the platform.

• Contributing to developing and evaluating models (including user engagement foundation model) leveraging pre-trained LLMs.

• Work closely with other research scientists, engineers, and product teams fostering a collaborative and intellectually stimulating environment.

• Contribute to millions of OTT platform users towards improving their experience by leveraging AI capabilities.

• Contribute to the research community by sharing insights and participating in external academic workshops and conferences.

Work Location:

• Remote within India,

Duration of the paid contractual role:

• The annual paid direct contractual tenure is extendable.
• Ideally this position will start from first/second week of December 2025.
• The working hours are from 9:00 to 18:00 (Monday to Friday) full-time.

Essential Education:

• Candidates who have successfully completed Ph.D./Master degree preferably from CS/AI/ML (recommendation, foundational models etc.) academic background.

Must Have Skills & Abilities:

• A strong background in applied deep learning and machine learning, both in terms of conceptual understanding, as well as practical experience.
• A good understanding on handling large scale datasets with SQL.
• Understanding about current start of the art machine learning literature.
• Prior experience in developing large scale prediction and reasoning models.
• Strong knowledge and interest in LLMs (fine-tuning, training and using LLMs).
• Proficiency in hands-on with Python and one or more popular deep learning framework.
• Ability to envision new ideas and proving them through theory and/or experiments.
• Knowledge of working on any cloud platform, preferably AWS, is desirable.

Good to Have Skills:

• PhD candidates with thesis in the area of causal inference is highly preferred.
• 0-1 year of work experience in building and deploying large-scale predictive models in production.
• 0-1 year of work experience in LLM/NLP projects within a start-up environment.
• Good publication record, with publications in major machine learning conferences (e.g. NeurIPS, ICML, KDD, AAAI, SIGIR, RecSys, WSDM, ICDM, ECML, etc.).

Our Values:

• Dreams & Curiosity: Pioneer the future with dreams and curiosity.
• Diversity: Pursue the creation of the very best by harnessing diversity and varying viewpoints.
• Integrity & Sincerity: Earn the trust for Sony brand through ethical and responsible conduct.
• Sustainability: Fulfil our stakeholder responsibilities through disciplined business practices.

Sony Research India is committed to equal opportunity in all its employment practices, policies and procedures and to ensuring that no worker or potential worker will receive less favourable treatment due to any characteristic protected under applicable local laws.