Research Scientist Intern - Machine Learning and NLP

Job Description

The Intern Experience

At Rakuten, we pride ourselves on giving interns a genuine, immersive experience that has a direct impact on company objectives. You will do meaningful work, and with us, you’ll be a true member of the team. We are also invested in your growth as an individual and professional. That’s why you can expect curated events such as professional development workshops, interactions with Rakuten leadership, and relationship building opportunities with other interns and professionals at the company.

Who We Are

Rakuten is one of the largest internet services companies globally and provides more than 70 services spanning e-commerce, finance, telecommunication, sports, and much more to approximately 1.4 billion customers. Rakuten Institute of Technology (RIT) is the dedicated Research and Innovation department of Rakuten, with teams in Tokyo, Paris, Boston, Singapore, San Mateo, and Bengaluru.

Summary

With the various services, we are receiving constant customer feedback on our products from multiple channels. We are looking for a Research Scientist Intern to maximize customer satisfaction for Rakuten products by exploiting such customer feedback. As a Research Scientist Intern, you will work closely with research scientists to improve various Rakuten services with machine intelligence. You will apply state-of-the-art ML techniques to large-scale, real-world datasets to solve real-world problems. You may be able to contribute to the research community by publishing papers.

Key Responsibilities

• Implement and design advanced use-profiling models using large-scale heterogeneous datasets on a distributed environment.
• Conduct thorough literature reviews to stay updated with the latest advancements in the field and apply relevant findings to ongoing projects.
• Work closely with research scientists to improve the existing solutions in production.

Minimum Requirements

• Research experience in machine learning in information retrieval, recommendation systems, personalization, and/or computational advertising.
• Solid programming experience in Python, and/or C/C++.
• Hands-on experience with deep learning libraries like PyTorch.
• Development experience on Linux environment.
• Great interpersonal skills.

Preferred Requirements

• Relevant work experience, including internships, full-time industry experience, or as a researcher in a lab.
• Experience with large-scale computing environments such as AWS, Hadoop, or Spark.
• Academic publication at peer-reviewed international conferences or in journals.
• Ability to communicate and visualize the research results.

Qualification Requirements

• Must be pursuing a Ph.D. or MS (or equivalent postgraduate degree) in Computer Science, Statistics, Electrical Engineering, or relevant studies with an anticipated graduation date no earlier than April 2025.

Five Principles for Success

Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviors that make Rakuten unique and united across the world. We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success:

• Always improve, Always Advance - Only be satisfied with complete success - Kaizen.
• Passionately Professional - Take an uncompromising approach to your work and be determined to be the best.
• Hypothesize - Practice - Validate – Shikumika - Use the Rakuten Cycle to succeed in unknown territory.
• Maximize Customer Satisfaction - The greatest satisfaction for our teams is seeing their customers smile.
• Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! - Always be conscious of time - take charge, set clear goals, and engage your team.

Rakuten provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type. Rakuten considers applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, provincial, or local laws.