Description

Sprout Social is looking to hire Associate Data Scientists to the Engineering team.

Why join Sprout’s AI team?

Starting your career at Sprout’s AI team means diving into a dynamic, collaborative environment where you'll work alongside experienced professionals in AI, data science, and engineering. You’ll have the chance to learn and grow quickly by solving challenging problems and contributing to projects that impact thousands of customers. At Sprout, we provide continuous learning opportunities, including mentorship from industry experts and exposure to a wide range of AI tools and techniques. You won't need to switch companies to diversify your skills—our product suite offers projects across different teams, giving you the flexibility to explore new areas, advance your knowledge, and shape your career path right here. Join us to build a strong foundation and make a real impact from day one.

What you’ll do

In our AI and Data Science program for new graduates, you’ll be embedded as a member of our cross-functional engineering teams in an nimble development environment. Based on your interests and our business needs, you will be placed in one of three AI domains:

Generative AI – Building features that leverage state of the art LLMs and other generative models
Message Enrichment – Classifying and extracting information from social media and other content
Go-to-market data science – Using AI, statistical techniques and experimentation to guide business growth and evaluate impact to the business’ bottom line and customer value.

Our data scientists work in tandem with cross-functional partners and stakeholders including product managers and product designers to drive our product initiatives to successful outcomes. Our small teams (6-10 people) provide a friendly and supportive atmosphere to learn while shipping production software.

At Sprout, we'll help you grow your skills and your career through onboarding, mentorship, and the opportunity to pair with more senior data scientists. You’ll have the opportunity to work with a diverse group of individuals, propose product and technical changes, and deliver best-in-class AI solutions. If you’re passionate about solving complex problems and AI solutions using cutting edge technologies, we’d love to talk with you!

Note: Applicants to this role should plan to start full-time in the summer of 2025 from either our Chicago or Seattle offices or remotely in one of our approved states listed in the dropdown menu below.

Qualifications

These are the minimum qualifications that our hiring team is looking for in this role:

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science, Applied Statistics, or a related field
Previous software engineering or data science internship experience

Additionally, these are the preferred qualifications that would indicate a particularly strong candidate:

Familiarity with core AI concepts (e.g., statistics, supervised/unsupervised learning, model performance, generative AI, etc.)
Experience with SQL and Python
Git repository or other publicly available evidence of AI/Data Science projects

Within 1 month, you will:

Experience Sprout’s in-depth onboarding, covering everything from our company mission and values, hearing directly from executives and founders, to deep training on our products and the value that Sprout delivers to our customers.
Make a plan with your manager to set initial priorities, align on expectations for your role, plant goalposts for your career, and learn about Sprout’s approach to AI and engineering.
Familiarize with our best practices to build a model
Collaborate regularly with your product manager, product designer and fellow data scientists to deliver value to our users.
Get regular team feedback on your solutions through code/design/analysis reviews.
Deliver business value by delivering your first component of a data product (e.g., an analysis, a part of a model, etc.)

Within 3 months, you will:

Learn our AI best practices, source control, editors, tools, etc.
Familiarize Sprout's data and/or AI models owned by the Squad
Develop a foundational understanding of our product and customer needs.
Contribute to our Agile culture of continuous improvement through retrospective meetings and experimentation-oriented thinking.
Build connections with members from other teams through active networking and community building
Attend technical design meetings with your teammates to walk through new feature ideas.
Build your data science skills by attending in-house presentations, workshops, and training sessions.

Within 6 months, you will:

Independently own well-defined sub-tasks of an AI feature (e.g., EDA, training a model, comparing model performance, etc.)
Focus on model quality through offline model evaluation analysis.
Work with your product manager and fellow engineers to create and prioritize quarterly team goals.
Collaborate with product managers, product designers, and engineers to come up with the MVPs of new features.
Have your first performance conversation with your manager, where you’ll discuss your accomplishments in your role and work together to build goals for your professional growth.

Within 12 months, you will:

Have a track record of owning and delivering small-to-medium components of an AI solution on time, from implementation to testing to final delivery.
Test model performance or quality of AI solution built.
Participate in AI design discussions with senior team members.
Understand trade-offs that exist with AI/engineering solutions, knowing that solutions can favor faster delivery with less strict technical requirements or solutions can favor future technical maintainability with delayed delivery of customer value.
Contribute to technical initiatives that improve the health of the team’s systems.
Understand how the team uses frameworks and software dependencies and help keep them up to date.
Surprise us! Use your unique ideas and abilities to change your team in beneficial ways that we haven’t even considered yet.

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. Our benefits program includes:

Insurance and benefit options that are built for both individuals and families
Progressive policies to support work/life balance, like our flexible paid time off and parental leave program
High-quality and well-maintained equipment—your computer will never prevent you from doing your best
Wellness initiatives to ensure both health and mental well-being of our team
Ongoing education and development opportunities via our Grow@Sprout program and employee-led diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Growing corporate social responsibility program that is driven by the involvement and passion of our team members
Beautiful, convenient and state-of-the-art offices in Chicago’s Loop and downtown Seattle, for those who prefer an office setting

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.

The base pay for this role is $115,000 annually. Individual base pay is based on various factors, including work location, relevant experience and skills, the responsibility of the role, and job duties/requirements.

Sprout’s compensation ranges are intentionally broad to allow for our team members' growth within their role. 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.

Base pay is only one element of an employee's total compensation at Sprout. Every Sprout team member has an opportunity to receive restricted stock units (RSUs) under Sprout’s equity plan. Employees (and their dependents) are covered by medical, dental, vision, basic life, accidental death, and dismemberment insurance, and Modern Health (a wellness benefit). Employees are able to enroll in Sprout’s company’s 401k plan, in which Sprout will match 50% of your contributions up to 6% with a maximum contribution. Sprout offers “Flexible Paid Time Off” and ten paid holidays. We have outlined the various components to an employee’s full compensation package here to help you to understand our total rewards package.

Sprout Social is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer and an Affirmative Action 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. Learn more about our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in our latest DEI Report.

If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please contact us by email at accommodations@sproutsocial.com and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information. We'll do all we can to ensure you're set up for success during our interview process while upholding your privacy, including requests for accommodation. Please note that only inquiries concerning a request for reasonable accommodation will be responded to from this email address.

For more information about our commitment to equal employment opportunity, please click here (1) Equal Opportunity Employment Poster (2) Sprout Social's Affirmative Action Statement (3) Pay Transparency Statement.

When you apply for employment with Sprout Social, we will process your job applicant data, including your employment and education history, transcript, writing samples, and references as necessary to consider your job application for open positions. Your personal data will be shared with Greenhouse Software, Inc., and Crosschq, Inc., cloud services providers located in the United States of America and engaged by Sprout Social to help manage its recruitment and hiring process on Controller’s behalf. Accordingly, if you are located outside of the United States, by clicking “Submit Application” on this site, you consent to the transfer of your personal data to the United States. For more information about our privacy practices please visit our Privacy Policy. California residents have additional rights and should review the Additional Disclosures for California Residents section in our Privacy Policy.

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

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