Senior Applied AI/ML Scientist

Sprout Social is looking for a Senior Applied AI/ML Scientist to join its AI, Data, and Intelligence Business Unit and drive advancements to our suite of agentic and ML capabilities that are the foundation of Sprout Intelligence.  

Sprout Social empowers businesses worldwide to harness the power of social media. Processing over one billion social messages daily, our platform serves essential insights to over 30,000 brands. We are weaving AI throughout our products, and this role sits at the center of making that AI trustworthy: as we ship agents across our product suite, the hardest and most valuable problem is knowing whether an agent is actually good, and making it better. That is the work of this role.

Own the development of agents and agentic features alongside our engineering teams. 

Scientists define what quality means for our agents, design and calibrate the evaluations and judges that measure it, decide which models to adopt and why, identify and implement improvements to core agentic capabilities, and hold the quality bar as we scale Sprout’s agentic platform. If you are energized by the question "how do we effectively use AI to solve hard problems for our customers”, then this is the role for you.

• Own end-to-end agent and agentic feature development, including defining requirements, definitions of success, evals, guardrails, the necessary tools; and working with engineers, designers, and PMs to execute. 
• Lead model selection, development and validation: rigorously assess whether a model or configuration is genuinely better, and make well-reasoned adoption decisions.
• Design and run rigorous experimentation (A/B testing and other methods) to measure the real impact of AI features on customers.
• Set and evolve the quality bar across agents, and partner with engineers who build and run the agents and the eval infrastructure so your judgment scales across many systems rather than one.
• Identify opportunities to improve the capabilities of our agent platform, ranging from prompt iteration, reusable judges, context window management, tool use, adopting new state of the art models. 
• Communicate AI capabilities, limitations, and quality clearly to product, design, engineering, and leadership, so decisions are grounded in evidence.

We are looking for a scientist whose strength is evaluation and judgment about AI systems, not primarily model construction. You understand models deeply enough to judge them, and you are excited to own the quality and measurement layer of production AI.

Minimum qualifications:

• 5+ years of applied AI/ML experience, with a strong track record in the evaluation, measurement, and quality of AI/ML or LLM systems that shipped and drove measurable impact.
• Demonstrated experience designing evaluation frameworks, building and calibrating judges or automated evaluators, and establishing their reliability, for ML or LLM/agentic systems.
• Strong judgment in model selection and validation: assessing whether one model or approach is genuinely better than another, and why.
• Rigorous experimentation and statistical skills: A/B testing, power analysis, and sound measurement design.
• Foundational ML and modeling knowledge (Python, common ML frameworks, transformers and embeddings) sufficient to reason about and evaluate the systems you assess. SQL and comfort with large datasets.
• Ability to work closely with product, design, and engineering, and to translate technical quality questions into terms stakeholders can act on.

Preferred qualifications:

• Direct experience evaluating LLM-driven or agentic products in production (prompt quality, judge design, hallucination and quality measurement, tool-calling reliability).
• Experience defining a quality bar or evaluation methodology that other people and teams then built against.
• Rapid prototyping with new AI/ML techniques to assess their applicability.
• Familiarity with eval tooling and observability (e.g. Datadog, Phoenix, or similar) and MLOps practices.
• Experience influencing product roadmaps with evidence about AI quality and feasibility.
• Awareness of AI/ML model security, bias mitigation, and responsible-AI practices.

Within 1 month, you’ll plant your roots, including:

• Complete Sprout's New Hire training alongside other new team members.
• Meet your onboarding resources and get familiar with our agents, eval systems, available data, and quality practices.
• Begin meeting with stakeholders across product, engineering, and design to understand the agents in production and how quality is measured today.
• Work with your manager to define your first area of ownership.

Within 3 months, you’ll start hitting your stride by:

• Take ownership of the evaluation and quality of one or more agents, designing or strengthening the evals and judges that measure them.
• Deepen your understanding of Sprout's products, customers, and agents to identify where quality can be improved.

Within 6 months, you’ll be making a clear impact through:

• Own the quality bar for a meaningful part of the agent surface, and drive model-selection and improvement decisions grounded in evidence.
• Contribute to the longer-term roadmap for AI quality and evaluation at Sprout.
• Help refine and guide our evaluation methodology and best practices.

Within 12 months, you’ll make this role your own by:

• Anchor the eval and judgment layer across multiple agents, with your methodology adopted by others.
• Identify new opportunities to raise the quality and capability of our agentic platform.
• Build relationships with business unit leaders, stakeholders, and executives.
• Elevate the technical excellence of the team and our evaluation practices.
• Stay current with state-of-the-art research and bring it to bear.
• Surprise us! Use your unique ideas to improve the team in ways we haven't considered.

Of course what is outlined above is the ideal timeline, but things may shift based on business needs and other projects and tasks could be added at the discretion of your manager.

Our Benefits Program 

We’re proud to regularly be recognized for our team, product, and culture. We invest in our team with a comprehensive, competitive benefits program:

• Comprehensive Health & Wellness: Premium BCBSIL medical, dental (high/low plans), and vision (Eyemed) insurance for you and your eligible dependents.
• Premium Mental Health Support: Full, free access to Modern Health for you and your dependents, including coaching, therapy sessions, and digital wellness resources.
• Retirement Savings: 401(k) plan with a 50% company match on your first 6% of contributions (a 3% total match).
• Financial Security: 100% employer-paid Life and Disability insurance for your peace of mind.
• Flexible Paid Time Off: A flexible PTO policy, supplemented with additional company-wide Rest & Recharge days throughout the year.
• Paid Parental Leave: Up to 16 weeks of paid leave for new parents to support you in expanding your family.
• Annual Lifestyle Stipend: A $1,000 USD annual Lifestyle Spending Account to spend on your physical, mental, and financial well-being.
• Work From Home Support: A one-time $550 USD stipend to set up your home office, plus a monthly $50 USD stipend for internet.
• Giving Back: 16 hours of paid volunteer time annually, plus a $100 annual match for your charitable donations.
• Additional Financial Perks: Access to pre-tax commuter benefits, subsidized child/eldercare (Care.com), discounted pet insurance (Figo), and no-cost personalized financial wellness support through Your Money Line.

*This list is for informational purposes only. Benefit offerings are discretionary and subject to change and do not constitute a contract or guarantee of benefits.

Whenever possible, Sprout wants to provide our team with the flexibility to work in the location that makes the most sense for them. Sprout maintains a remote workforce in many places in the United States. However, we are not set up in all states, so please look at the drop-down box in our application to see whether your state is listed. Few roles require an office setting. If your position requires a physical presence in a Sprout office, it will be evident in the job listing and your offer letter.

Our salary ranges reflect the expected earning potential for this role. Individual pay is based on geographic zone, relevant experience, and skills.

Our current hiring range for this role: $168,000– $210,000 annually. Offers are made within this range, with opportunities to grow within the broader band based on performance and impact.

We share both our current hiring range and our broader geographic salary bands to provide transparency into our compensation philosophy. This ensures you understand not only your starting potential but also the long-term growth potential available as you progress in your role.

We have two geographic pay zones in the United States:

Zone 1 (New York, California, Washington): $184,800 – $277,200

Zone 2 (All other US states): $168,000 – $252,000

These ranges were determined by a market-based compensation approach; we used data from trusted third-party compensation sources to set equitable, consistent, and competitive ranges. We also evaluate compensation bi-annually, identify any changes in the market and make adjustments to our ranges and existing employee compensation as needed.

Sprout Social is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate based on identity- race, color, religion, national origin or ancestry, sex (including sexual identity), age, physical or mental disability, pregnancy, veteran or military status, unfavorable discharge from military service, genetic information, sexual orientation, marital status, order of protection status, citizenship status, arrest record or expunged or sealed convictions, or any other legally recognized protected basis under federal, state, or local law. Because Sprout Social is a federal contractor, we affirmatively recruit individuals with a disability and protected veterans. Learn more about our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in our latest DEI Report.

If you require a reasonable accommodation for any part of the interview process or to submit your application, please email us at [email protected]. Include the nature of your request and your preferred contact information. We'll do everything we can to support your success during our recruitment process while upholding your privacy. Please note that only inquiries regarding accommodations will receive a response from this email address; other inquiries will not be addressed (e.g., you send your resume but are not requesting an accommodation). 

For more information about our commitment to equal employment opportunity, please click here (1) Equal Opportunity Employment Poster and (2) Sprout Social's Affirmative Action Statement. 

Additionally, Sprout Social participates in the E-Verify program in certain locations, as required by law. 

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