---
title: 'Sr. Applied Scientist at Viant Technology'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/sr-applied-scientist-viant-technology-irvine-rg923kbq4vg2'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-13'
---

# Sr. Applied Scientist at Viant Technology

- **Company:** Viant Technology
- **Location:** Irvine, CA / Los Angeles, CA / United States
- **Posted:** 2026-10-02
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-13
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/vianttechnology/jobs/4410071009

## Job description

## WHAT YOU’LL DO

Viant’s Machine Learning team is building autonomous advertising systems that make real-time decisions across targeting, ad optimization, bidding, measurement, and personalization. These systems process hundreds of millions of events daily and operate in the high-throughput, low-latency environment of programmatic advertising.

As an Applied Scientist, you will apply reinforcement learning and related decision-making methods to improve how Viant selects, ranks, and bids on advertising opportunities. You will work across contextual bandits, exploration and exploitation, counterfactual learning, and model-based experimentation to turn research into production systems that improve campaign performance, auction efficiency, and measurable business outcomes.

## THE DAY-TO-DAY

- Develop, train, and evaluate reinforcement learning, contextual bandit, ranking, and prediction models for ad optimization, bid optimization, targeting, and personalization.
- Study auction dynamics, delayed feedback, exploration and exploitation, budget constraints, pacing, and reward design to improve real-time advertising decisions.
- Translate research ideas into production-ready models that operate reliably at high throughput and low latency across Viant’s advertising platform.
- Design and analyze offline and online experiments, including counterfactual and off-policy evaluation where appropriate, to measure model quality and incremental business impact.
- Partner with engineers to deploy, monitor, retrain, and improve models in production, addressing issues such as data leakage, class imbalance, drift, calibration, and changing market conditions.
- Apply quantitative reasoning and statistical modeling to problems involving click-through rate, conversion, return on ad spend, targeting, attribution, identity, and measurement.
- Collaborate with scientists, engineers, and product partners to define objectives, labels, loss functions, reward signals, evaluation metrics, and practical delivery plans.
- Contribute to a rigorous, research-oriented team culture through technical communication, code and model reviews, experimentation, and knowledge sharing.

## MUST HAVE

- 3-5 years of experience developing and applying machine learning models, ideally in production or research environments with measurable outcomes.
- Strong foundation in machine learning, deep learning, probability, statistics, and optimization, with practical experience using Python and frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.
- Coursework, research, internship, or project experience with reinforcement learning, contextual bandits, sequential decision-making, recommendation systems, online experimentation, or related methods.
- Ability to formulate a machine learning problem precisely, including objectives, labels, features, loss or reward functions, evaluation metrics, and experimental design.
- Experience analyzing large-scale data and communicating technical findings clearly to scientists, engineers, and cross-functional partners.
- Interest in building models that move beyond offline accuracy and improve real-world decisions in production systems.
- Experience with reinforcement learning in advertising, marketplaces, recommendation systems, robotics, games, or other sequential decision-making environments.
- Exposure to contextual bandits, off-policy or counterfactual evaluation, causal inference, auction theory, or online experimentation.

## GREAT TO HAVE

- Experience with digital advertising, real-time bidding, audience modeling, ad ranking, personalization, or large-scale recommendation systems is a plus.
- Experience with distributed computing, cloud platforms, LLMs, generative AI, or multimodal AI is also welcome, but the core focus of this role is production-oriented reinforcement learning and decisioning.

## LIFE AT VIANT

Investing in our employee’s professional growth is important to us, but so is investing in their well-being. That’s why Viant was voted one of the best places to work and some of our favorite employee benefits include fully paid health insurance, paid parental leave and unlimited PTO and more.

Base compensation range: $170,000 - $200,000

In accordance with California law, the range provided is Viant’s reasonable estimate of the compensation for this role.  Final title and compensation for the position will be based on several factors including work experience and education.

## #LI-AM1

## About Viant

Viant Technology (NASDAQ: DSP) is an exclusively buy-side, AI-powered advertising platform purpose-built for CTV. Viant uniquely combines proprietary content intelligence, household-level identity resolution, and person-level attention signals to connect advertisers with real customers and drive measurable outcomes across the open internet. Through its award-winning AI solutions, Viant is building the future of autonomous advertising, where AI doesn't just assist the campaign, it delivers real results. Learn more at viantinc.com.

Viant is an equal opportunity employer and makes employment decisions on the basis of merit.  Viant prohibits unlawful discrimination against employees or applicants based on race (including traits historically associated with race, such as hair texture and protective hairstyles), religion, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, reproductive health decision making, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, military status, veteran status, uniformed service member status, sexual orientation, transgender identity, citizenship status, pregnancy, or any other consideration made unlawful by federal, state, or local laws.  Viant also prohibits unlawful discrimination based on the perception that anyone has any of those characteristics, or is associated with a person who has or is perceived as having any of those characteristics.

By clicking “Apply for this Job” and providing any information, I accept the [Viant California Personnel Privacy Notice.](https://www.viantinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Viant-2023-California-Personnel-Privacy-Notice-AMERICAS-1094795100-v11.pdf)

## About Viant Technology

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Viant Technology is an AI-powered, buy-side programmatic advertising platform purpose-built for Connected TV (CTV), enabling marketers to plan, execute, and measure omnichannel campaigns across the open internet.
- **Entity Type**: Public (NASDAQ: DSP)
- **Headquarters**: Irvine, California, United States
- **Founded**: 1999
- **Founders**: Tim Vanderhook (CEO) and Chris Vanderhook (COO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Advertising Technology (AdTech) / Programmatic Advertising
- **Target customers**: Primarily B2B, serving advertisers, agencies, and brands (buy-side) looking to run data-driven CTV and digital ad campaigns.
- **Mission / Purpose Statement**: To drive innovation in digital marketing by empowering advertisers to achieve their boldest goals through fully autonomous, people-based advertising solutions.

## Products & Services
- **Viant Advertising Platform**: An omnichannel, AI-powered demand-side platform (DSP) that allows marketers to plan, execute, and measure campaigns across CTV, digital audio, digital out-of-home, in-game, and other emerging channels. It emphasizes people-based advertising without third-party cookies, using proprietary content intelligence and household-level identity resolution.
- **ViantAI**: A suite of award-winning AI solutions aimed at building the future of autonomous advertising, where AI delivers real results in campaign execution and optimization.
- **Publisher Solutions**: A centralized tool set providing publishers with access to critical insights and monetization intelligence across the Viant platform (launched June 2026).

## Market Standing
- **Market Cap**: ~$336.5 million (as of mid-2026)
- **Annual Revenue**: ~$344.2 million
- **Total Funding**: ~$372.9 million (including a $100M venture round in 2007 and a $250M post-IPO equity round)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Viant was acquired by Time Inc. in 2016 and later spun out. Key executives include Fabrizio Blanco (CTO), Larry Madden (CFO), Dustin Kwan (CPO), and Linh Chung (CIO).
- **Growth Signals**: 13.4% year-over-year employee growth (337 employees); active job postings up 51.7% year-over-year; operates in 6 countries; recently named "Best Demand Side Platform" by MarTech Breakthrough.

## Competitive Advantages
- **People-Based, Cookie-Less Platform**: A core differentiator is the ability to activate first-party data and target real people across devices without relying on third-party cookies, making it future-proof for privacy-focused advertising.
- **CTV-First Focus**: The platform is purpose-built for Connected TV, a rapidly growing segment of digital advertising.
- **Proprietary AI (ViantAI)**: Award-winning AI and machine learning capabilities that drive autonomous campaign performance and measurement.
- **Longevity & Stability**: Over 20 years in the AdTech space with a public market listing, providing stability and a track record of innovation.

## Strategic Focus
- **Autonomous Advertising**: Leading the industry toward fully autonomous, AI-driven campaign management.
- **CTV & Omnichannel Expansion**: Deepening capabilities in CTV and expanding into emerging channels like digital audio and in-game advertising.
- **Publisher Ecosystem**: Strengthening the publisher side of the marketplace with new tools and insights.
- **First-Party Data Empowerment**: Continuing to help advertisers leverage their own data in a privacy-compliant manner.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & Recognition**: Viant has been certified as a "Great Place to Work" and emphasizes a culture of innovation, collaboration, and fun. The company is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
- **Compensation & Benefits**: Offers fully employer-covered medical, dental, and vision insurance; unlimited PTO (eligible from day one); 16 weeks paid parental leave for primary caregivers and 6 weeks for secondary caregivers; long-term disability and life insurance.
- **Work Environment**: A fast-paced environment with a hybrid work model; specific roles require 4 days in-office (Monday-Thursday) with the option to work remotely on Fridays. Offices are located in Irvine (HQ), Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, and Seattle.
- **Engineering & Growth**: Teams work with cutting-edge technologies, handle petabytes of data, and have strong opportunities for professional development. The company has a strong track record of employee growth and internal mobility.
- **Internship Program**: Offers mission-critical internships across engineering, sales, marketing, and more.

## Sources
1. [viantinc.com](https://www.viantinc.com/)
2. [viantinc.com/company](https://www.viantinc.com/company/)
3. [viantinc.com/company/careers](https://www.viantinc.com/company/careers/)
4. [greenhouse.io](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/vianttechnology/jobs/4215067009)
5. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/viant-technology)

## Other roles at Viant Technology

- [UCI Career Fair - 2027 Summer Internship](https://feeny.ai/job/uci-career-fair-2027-summer-internship-viant-technology-irvine-7g3y7kyze6hr) — Irvine, CA
- [Research Panel Growth Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/research-panel-growth-manager-viant-technology-boston-096x8rbbhwby) — Boston, MA / New York, NY
- [Staff Software Engineer - Ad Serving](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-ad-serving-viant-technology-irvine-k16ne9f6qbar) — Irvine, CA / Los Angeles, CA
- [Panel Recruiting Manager, TVision](https://feeny.ai/job/panel-recruiting-manager-tvision-viant-technology-boston-c30w4tdbeakm) — Boston, MA / New York, NY
- [Sr. Account Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/sr-account-manager-viant-technology-new-york-65kc9vxd1jts) — New York, NY
- [Account Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/account-manager-viant-technology-atlanta-1xdwbaaqrgcf) — Atlanta, GA
- [Account Executive - Dentsu](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-dentsu-viant-technology-new-york-3qsp0andk9rb) — New York, NY
- [Sr. Product Marketing Manager, GTM Content](https://feeny.ai/job/sr-product-marketing-manager-gtm-content-viant-technology-chicago-8kqj503dzcza) — Chicago, IL / Irvine, CA / Los Angeles, CA
- [Account Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/account-manager-viant-technology-new-york-5k1gh07bqamj) — New York, NY
- [Paralegal](https://feeny.ai/job/paralegal-viant-technology-irvine-w31am0gcka8k) — Irvine, CA