Senior Software Engineer, A.I. Initiatives

The mission of The New York Times is to seek the truth and help people understand the world. That means independent journalism is at the heart of all we do as a company. It’s why we have a world-renowned newsroom that sends journalists to report on the ground from nearly 160 countries. It’s why we focus deeply on how our readers will experience our journalism, from print to audio to a world-class digital and app destination. And it’s why our business strategy centers on making journalism so good that it’s worth paying for. 

Mission and Responsibilities:

The New York Times is seeking a full-stack software engineer to join our newly formed team focused on artificial-intelligence initiatives in the newsroom. The team ensures The Times remains on the forefront of digital journalism by prototyping internal and reader-facing applications of generative A.I. and other machine-learning techniques. Our goal is to develop new forms of journalism, empowering reporters across the newsroom with new and useful tools, while establishing principles for the ethical use of these technologies. 

As a core member of the team, you will brainstorm, evaluate, and prototype features and products that could improve internal workflows, reporting capabilities, and how The Times is presented to readers. You will build on top of existing machine-learning models to produce working prototypes of web applications and other interfaces. We are seeking candidates that are inveterate tinkerers, eager to experiment and share their findings with others. We favor demos over memos, prototypes over concepts, collaboration over silos, and learning over knowing it all. We are seeking candidates that are inveterate tinkerers, eager to experiment and share their findings with others. We favor demos over memos, prototypes over concepts, collaboration over silos, and learning over knowing it all. Specific responsibilities include:

• You will build prototypes that utilize machine-learning techniques for the betterment of The Times news report

• You will work day-to-day with the A.I. Initiatives Team and you will collaborate with the larger A.I. team and other desks in the newsroom to assess the value of each prototype and help determine those worth pursuing further

• You will stay up-to-date on the latest A.I. research and model development, to help inform the team’s work and spread technical proficiency throughout the organization

• You will report to the Editorial Director for A.I. Initiatives as well as the Interactive News team

Basic Qualifications:

• 4+ years of experience with full-stack engineering skills for developing front-end web applications with server-side components

• Technical proficiency and at least three years of experience developing applications with machine-learning models

• 2+ years of experience working with large-language and transformer models 

• Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different forms of generative A.I.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Knowledge of machine-learning frameworks and experience training and fine-tuning machine-learning models

• Experience in a newsroom or collaborating with journalists or other creative professionals on software development

• Translate big, creative ideas into a technical vision for building them and explaining them to others

• Stay informed about relevant technology trends and developments and adopt new technologies

This role may require limited on-call hours. An on-call schedule will be determined when you join, taking into account team size and other variables.

 

 

REQ-016171

The annual base pay range for this role is between:$140,000—$155,000 USD

The New York Times is committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce, one that reflects the varied global community we serve. Our journalism and the products we build in the service of that journalism greatly benefit from a range of perspectives, which can only come from diversity of all types, across our ranks, at all levels of the organization. Achieving true diversity and inclusion is the right thing to do. It is also the smart thing for our business. So we strongly encourage women, veterans, people with disabilities, people of color and gender nonconforming candidates to apply.

The New York Times Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of an individual's sex, age, race, color, creed, national origin, alienage, religion, mari