Shutterfly is seeking a Principal AI Engineer to lead the development of a next-generation AI-driven photo evaluation and personalized recommendation platform. The goal is to build systems that can intelligently evaluate and rank photos for their potential as personalized physical products by combining semantic image understanding, aesthetic scoring, and behavioral personalization into a unified recommendation pipeline.
Requirements
- Deep knowledge of computer vision techniques including CNNs, vision transformers, facial recognition, object detection, image classification, and image embedding.
- Strong experience with recommendation systems, collaborative filtering, deep learning for personalization, as well as transformer-based models for recommendation systems.
- Proficiency in Python and relevant ML libraries (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, OpenCV,
- Experience deploying ML models at scale (e.g., using Docker, AWS/GCP, or similar).
- Strong grasp of ML lifecycle best practices (data management, model evaluation, explainability, observability).
- Expertise in any CNN based models (MobileNetV3 VGG, Inception) as well as transformer-based vision models (e.g., ViT, CLIP, BLIP, DINOv2) for analyzing, scoring, performing similarity vector analysis and tagging photos with metadata such as:
- Build and deploy transformer-based ML models that analyze historical user behavior and purchasing patterns to generate personalized product recommendations.
Responsibilities
- Expertise in any CNN based models (MobileNetV3 VGG, Inception) as well as transformer-based vision models (e.g., ViT, CLIP, BLIP, DINOv2) for analyzing, scoring, performing similarity vector analysis and tagging photos with metadata such as:
- Develop scalable pipelines for processing large volumes of image data and generating structured, query-able metadata.
- Integrate image intelligence with downstream applications such as search, ranking, and personalization.
- Build and deploy transformer-based ML models that analyze historical user behavior and purchasing patterns to generate personalized product recommendations.
- Correlate behavior data with metadata from image scoring models to curate visual content for individual users.
- Lead experimentation frameworks (e.g., A/B testing) to optimize recommendation relevance and conversion.
- Define architectural direction for AI components and ensure their integration with core systems.
Other
- 10+ years of experience in software engineering with at least 5+ years in AI/ML-focused roles.
- Proven ability to lead cross-functional technical initiatives from ideation to delivery.
- Provide hands-on technical leadership, mentorship, and code contributions across teams.
- Drive strategic decisions regarding data acquisition, model training, deployment, and monitoring.
- MS in Computer Science or related field.
