Engineer II

AI Researcher – Amex AI Labs

You Lead the Way. We’ve Got Your Back.

At American Express, we know that with the right backing, people and businesses have the power to progress in incredible ways. Whether we’re supporting our customers’ financial confidence to move ahead, taking commerce to new heights, or encouraging people to explore the world, our colleagues are constantly redefining what’s possible — and we’re proud to back each other every step of the way. When you join #TeamAmex, you become part of a diverse community of over 60,000 colleagues, all with a common goal to deliver an exceptional customer experience every day.

Function Description:

With a focus on digitization, innovation, and analytics, the Global Decision Sciences (GDS) team creates central, scalable platforms and customer experiences to help markets across all of these priorities. Charter is to drive scale for the business, and accelerate innovation for both immediate impact as well as long-term transformation of our business. A unique aspect of GDS is the integration of diverse skills across all of its remit. GDS has a very broad range of responsibilities, resulting in a broad range of initiatives around the world. The Amex AI Labs of American Express Corporation, part of GDS, is looking for best in class AI Researchers to work in a dynamic and rewarding workplace. Amex AI Labs is currently co-located in Bangalore and New York and involves dynamic and talented researchers with Ph.D. or Master’s degree from top tier institutes in India and abroad having research and product development expertise in AI/ML technologies such as - Deep Learning, Data Science, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Cloud Technologies and related technical areas. Going beyond building products and solutions for traditional financial domains such as credit and fraud, the team is also working on challenging research problems in domains such as services, human resource management, travel & lifestyle, and many more. The key goal is to progress the state of the art in science and develop products to solve business problems, in a domain-agnostic manner, for American Express.

Role Name: AI Researcher – Amex AI Labs

Purpose of the Role:

The role would involve working on ongoing workstreams and complex business use-cases part of Machine Learning and Optimization charter, as well as exploratory work carried as part our research agenda. Candidate needs to have in-depth, up-to-date knowledge of ML techniques and applications in an industrial setting. Hands-on skills would be needed to develop end-to-end solutions and tuning them through stakeholder management. These workstreams and exploratory work cater to use-cases with multi-million dollar impact, so the candidate needs to have good organizing and book-keeping skills.

Responsibilities:

Amex AI Labs is looking for an AI Researcher with solid background in ML, and AI for its Machine Learning and Optimization team in Bangalore. The team have researchers working on some of the challenging topics of machine learning including fairness in AI, explainability, anomaly detection and so on. Successful candidates are expected to partner with different business and technology teams in American Express to build capabilities for high impact use-cases.

• Working as part of Machine Learning and Optimization group to develop novel ML solutions and next gen components that power our algorithms
• Leveraging proprietary data to advance our research agenda
• Managing discussions with business partners on active workstreams with multi-million $ impact
• Managing and supporting ML capabilities & services hosted on in-house platforms
• Actively contributing to relevant scientific communities

Critical Factors to Success (Outcome Driven):

Business Outcomes:

• Innovate ways to evangelize the product to drive Amex wide user adoption
• Contribute to the strategy and roadmap of AI/ML Initiatives to help drive most impact
• Evaluate prospective features in AI Products and ability to prioritise them with changing requirements in the direction of AI adoptions.

Leadership Outcomes:

• Lead with an external perspective, challenge status quo and bring continuous innovation to our existing offerings
• Demonstrate learning agility, make decisions quickly and with the highest level of integrity
• Lead with a digital mindset and deliver the world’s best customer experiences every day

Past Experience:

• 0-3 years of experience in AI R&D
• Preferred: Experience in developing enterprise wide AI/ML platforms, developing scalable AI services

Academic Background:

• Undergraduate/Master’s/PhD in Computer Science / Electrical Engineering / Operations Research / Statistics/ Mathematics, from institutes of global repute.

Functional Skills:

• Ability & experience in building a prototype and taking it to a product ready stage
• Strong quantitative, analytical, and structured problem-solving skills.
• Demonstrate creativity and self-sufficiency along with strong interpersonal/ collaborative skills and experience working in global teams
• Excellent verbal and written communications skills
• Experience defining and developing a new product or service.

Technical Skills:

Knowledge of Platforms:

• Knowledge of Big Data Platforms such as Spark, Hadoop and Amex specific platforms e.g., Cornerstone (Good to have)

Behavioral Areas:

Enterprise Leadership Behaviors

• Set The Agenda: Put Enterprise Thinking First, Lead with an External Perspective
• Bring Others With You: Build the Best Team, Seek & Provide Coaching Feedback, Make Collaboration Essential
• Do It The Right Way: Communicate Frequently, Candidly & Clearly, Make Decisions Quickly & Effectively, Live the Blue Box Values, Great Leadership Demands Courage
  

American Express is an equal opportunity employer and makes employment decisions without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, age, or any other status protected by law.

Offer of employment with American Express is conditioned upon the successful completion of a background verification check, subject to applicable laws and regulations.