Sr Engineering Manager, Machine Learning Ethics Transparency and Accountability (META)

Email [email protected] if you're interested in applying. 

Who We Are:

META (Machine learning Ethics, Transparency and Accountability) is a cross-functional team in Cortex focused on investigating the fairness and transparency of Twitter’s automated algorithmic decision making systems.

We believe in the power of bringing multiple perspectives together. META functions at the intersection of Machine Learning, Social Science, Policy, Legal, User Research and engages with numerous stakeholders across Twitter. Our Mission is to ensure Twitter’s ML systems are fair, transparent, and accountable. We have easy to use tools, well established investigation methodologies and frameworks to understand and mitigate the bias in our products powered by ML. 

What You’ll Do:

As Sr Engineering Manager, Machine Learning Ethics Transparency and Accountability, you will lead diverse, smart, and driven researchers and engineers while balancing fairness considerations with business requirements. You will communicate fearlessly and take an active role in shaping the future of Twitter engineering while embodying our core values. You will work with our machine learning engineers, researchers, designers and PM to understand implications of automated decision systems and to ensure that existing ML systems are fair and free of bias. 

Your responsibilities will include:

• Mentoring: Mentor the professional development of each direct report through personal and performance management. Establish regular 1:1s with direct reports..
• Advocating: Ensure that fairness and human rights stay at the center of Twitter’s ML systems. Share and educate others about METAs mission and how we can effectively partner to ensure the work of the META team can accelerate and scale to all ML engineers at Twitter. Establishes and maintains academic partnerships that allow META and Twitter to continue to be at the forefront of ethics in AI.
• Planning / Alignment: Contribute to product strategy for a world-class team of engineers and researchers on everything related to Machine learning Ethics, Transparency and Accountability at Twitter, motivating product decisions. Plan and collaborate with other teams in Twitter delivering impactful changes, whilst working together with other Cortex teams for the long term. 
• Provide oversight: Work with engineers and researchers to understand how everything fits together and how best to deliver meaningful impact. Understands when ML is applicable and when it is not, and what are the risks.
• Execution: Help team design and implement solutions to mitigate bias issues. Establish standard methodologies for responsible ML product development across the organization, discussing the metrics impact & tradeoffs of product changes with senior leadership. Bring principled and methodical decision-making. Make decisions which balance between immediate impact and long-term bets, as well as managing resourcing and prioritisation.
• Relationship management: Manage relationships between other teams which you’ll partner with to deliver impact. Communicate findings to the rest of the company and, when appropriate, to the academic community.
• Cross functional management: Work closely with other teams from across the company to deliver impactful projects which may involve multiple disciplines. 

Who You Are

• Interested in the field of ML Ethics, Transparency & Accountability, preferably with a wealth of experience and relationships in the area to inform and guide Twitter’s approach.
• Interested in how ML systems at scale affect the real world and want to make an impact.
• Excited about helping transform Twitter’s engineering culture to one that is centered around fairness and human rights. Excited about working in a nascent field, comfortable navigating many unknown unknowns.
• You have technical competency and understand the “big picture”, differences in technical disciplines (particularly on ML side), and which problems can be tackled next.
• You have a proven execution track record that is customer and user centric in prioritisation - looking to deliver projects that serve the company’s needs and understand the impact.
• You collaborate well with teams with different backgrounds / expertise / functions.
• Have a passion for scientific method of hypothesis validation and the systems thinking to scale learnings.
• Have a sense of urgency, move quickly and ship things.You have a get stuff done attitude, have great positive energy and thrive in fast-paced environments where the only constant is change.

Requirements

• Previously managed a team of engineers/researchers with responsibility for machine learning based products and delivering to production.
• Computer science or engineering background strongly preferred; a background in computational social science is a plus. Strong analytical abilities is a must.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills and able to manage multiple projects across a diverse set of stakeholders. 
• Exposure to large scale systems and microservice architectures is a plus.

We are committed to an inclusive and diverse Twitter. Twitter is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, veteran, genetic information, marital status or any other legally protected status.