Staff Research Scientist, Agentic AI

The Trade Desk is a global technology company on a mission: to create a better, more open internet for everyone through principled, intelligent advertising. Our platform handles over a trillion queries every single day, operating at one of the largest scales in the world. But our greatest strength is our award‑winning culture—rooted in trust, ownership, empathy, and collaboration. Our people bring diverse experiences, perspectives, and identities, and we cultivate an environment where everyone can thrive authentically.

If you are driven by solving complex problems at scale, excited by cutting‑edge research, and energized by working with talented colleagues around the globe, you’ll find your next chapter at The Trade Desk. It’s no surprise Fortune consistently ranks us among the best workplaces worldwide.

About the Role

As a Staff Research Scientist, you’ll operate as both a high‑impact technical leader and a mentor for others. You will:

• Own a technical problem space end‑to‑end—from research design to production delivery.

• Invent, build, and deploy data‑driven solutions that power one of the world’s most influential media platforms.

• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and people development, raising the bar for the broader research and engineering community at The Trade Desk.

• Partner across teams to bring cutting‑edge research into production and move an industry toward greater transparency, openness, and evidence‑based decision‑making.

This is a highly visible, high‑impact role where your contributions will shape real‑world outcomes at global scale.

What You’ll Do

• Lead and execute end‑to‑end AI/ML research initiatives with significant business impact.

• Identify high‑value opportunities, build prototypes, design experiments, validate hypotheses, and bring successful approaches into production.

• Serve as a technical mentor—elevating teammates through code reviews, architectural guidance, technical strategy, and hands‑on coaching.

• Collaborate closely with cross‑functional leaders to drive product discovery and define what will deliver real value to our clients.

• Navigate ambiguous, complex problems with creativity and a first‑principles mindset.

• Demonstrate strong ownership in a dynamic, startup‑like environment—making smart trade‑offs, adapting to shifting priorities, and championing bold ideas.

• Build inclusive, high‑trust relationships across a distributed global team.

Who We’re Looking For

• You have a sustained track record of independent, high‑impact contributions to large AI/ML initiatives.

• You think deeply—beyond the “what”—about the “why,” and you consistently drive clarity in ambiguous spaces.

• You are a natural driver: planning and steering complex projects, participating in code reviews, and contributing high‑quality code yourself.

• You have strong data intuition, especially in environments where off‑the‑shelf approaches fail and novel solutions are required.

• You have a product‑oriented mindset, capable of pitching ideas and influencing stakeholders across all levels.

• You work with confidence but without ego, balancing strong opinions with openness to being challenged.

• You seek out and foster diversity of thought, and you excel at building from common ground.

• You’re a creative problem‑solver who thrives when inventing what doesn’t exist yet.

What You Bring to our AI team

• ~8+ years of experience in AI/ML research or applied machine learning (advanced degrees welcome but not required).

• A proven ability to translate state‑of‑the‑art research into solutions for real‑world, large‑scale problems.

• Experience collaborating within an agile, distributed, multi‑timezone research team.

• Exceptional communication skills across technical and non‑technical audiences.

• Strong programming and big‑data engineering skills (e.g., Python, Scala, Spark) and experience building algorithms that operate on massive datasets.

• Depth in one or more advanced areas (a strong plus):

• Generative AI

• Agentic AI

• Reinforcement learning, large‑scale optimization, probabilistic modeling, or related domains

The Trade Desk is an equal opportunity employer. Employment decisions are based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other protected status under applicable laws.

As an Equal Opportunity Employer, The Trade Desk is committed to creating an inclusive hiring experience where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

Please reach out to us at accommodations@​thetradedesk.​com to request an accommodation or discuss any accessibility needs you may require to access our Company Website or navigate any part of the hiring process.

When you contact us, please include your preferred contact details and specify the nature of your accommodation request or questions. Any information you share will be handled confidentially and will not impact our hiring decisions.