Vice President / Director of Machine Learning - San Francisco, CA - Aarki

About Us

Aarki is an AI company that builds advertising solutions to drive mobile revenue growth. We use AI to find audiences in a privacy-first world using trillions of contextual bidding signals coupled with proprietary behavioral models. Our audience engagement platform includes a full-service agency team and a Unified Creative Strategy that delivers ad creative ideation and execution. We have worked with hundreds of advertisers over 14 years and see 5M mobile ad requests per second from over 10B devices, driving performance for publishers and brands. It is independently operated and headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with offices across the United States, EMEA, and APAC.

Role Overview

Aarki is seeking a visionary Vice President / Director of Machine Learning to lead the development of groundbreaking AI-driven solutions that will shape the future of mobile advertising. This pivotal role will focus on launching our User Acquisition (UA) product, driving end-to-end automation to minimize human intervention, and developing AI agents to enhance internal operations, with potential for commercialization and licensing. This is an exciting opportunity for someone passionate about using AI to disrupt the mobile advertising space while leading a team of top talent. If you’re ready to take on a role with significant impact and shape the future of performance marketing, we want to hear from you. This role is on-site five (5) days a week at our San Francisco, California.

Role & Responsibilities

• Own the strategy and execution of AI and machine learning initiatives that drive automation and innovation within the UA product, delivering solutions that reduce manual intervention
• Serve as the thought leader in AI/ML, advising the leadership team on leveraging cutting-edge technologies to advance Aarki’s product offerings
• Build and lead a high-performing team of machine learning engineers and data scientists, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning
• Oversee the design, development, and deployment of ML models in production environments, including areas like user response prediction, bid landscape forecasting, and optimization algorithms
• Partner with engineering, product, and business teams to ensure that AI initiatives align with broader business goals and key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Develop and manage frameworks for continuous evaluation, improvement, and innovation of machine learning models and algorithms

• Define and prioritize project goals, set clear expectations, and ensure timely delivery of high-quality solutions.

Skills & Experience

• 10+ years of experience in machine learning or AI, with at least five years in a senior leadership role, managing teams and large-scale AI/ML projects
• Proven track record of delivering production-grade machine learning solutions, with expertise in deep learning, reinforcement learning, recommender systems, and optimization algorithms
• Proficiency in Python. Familiarity with TensorFlow/PyTorch, Scikit-Learn, XGBoost, Spark, and SQL. Experience with deploying ML models to production systems.
• Strong experience leading and mentoring teams, project management, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Deep understanding of probability, statistics, numerical optimization, and stochastic methods.
• Familiarity with RTB, auction theory, and high-throughput, low-latency environments is a plus.
• Experience with additional programming languages (Rust, C++, C#, Java, Scala) and large-scale data processing systems
• Ph.D or Masters in Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, or a related technical field.