---
title: 'Staff Applied Scientist, Search & Discovery at Material Bank'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-applied-scientist-search-discovery-material-bank-remote-rhevqyh5r39b'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Staff Applied Scientist, Search & Discovery at Material Bank

- **Company:** Material Bank
- **Location:** Remote
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-08-04
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://boards.greenhouse.io/materialbank/jobs/7821981003?gh_jid=7821981003

## Job description

Material Bank is the world’s largest material marketplace for the architecture and design industry. Operating in 37 countries, our platform has become the standard for design professionals around the globe. Every day, Material Bank connects thousands of designers with tens of thousands of materials from leading brands. Material Bank is the fastest and most powerful way for design professionals to search, sample, and specify materials.

Material Bank is seeking a Staff Applied Scientist to drive building search and recommendations from the ground up. We are the largest marketplace for architecture and design professionals, and we are building a discovery platform that helps them find materials across hundreds of brands and surfaces intelligent recommendations as they explore. Search and recommendations are how that discovery happens. The surface is wide open, the right techniques for our domain are still unsettled, and the person in this role is the one who figures them out and builds them.

This is a hands-on research role. You will not hand formulas to an engineering team and walk away. You will explore the data, form the hypothesis, prototype the approach, and prove it works, then partner with engineering to take it to production.

## What you'll do

- Improve search retrieval and ranking. Design, tune, and evaluate how we retrieve and rank search results so members find what they need and discover what they did not know to ask for. Bring real depth on ranking.
- Build our recommendation systems from the ground up. Intelligent recommendations are central to the discovery experience we are building. Design robust recommendation algorithms, model member and project intent, and figure out what to surface, when, and where across the experience.
- Explore the data to find the strategy. Run exploratory analysis on behavioral and catalog data to figure out which approaches fit our members and our catalog. The answers are not known yet; a large part of this job is asking the right questions and finding them in the data.
- Apply advanced query understanding. Improve query parsing, intent recognition, and semantic understanding for diverse, messy real-world queries, including the long tail.
- Raise data quality. Search and recommendation quality is downstream of catalog quality. Identify the data problems that hold relevance back and help fix them.
- Do R&D you can ship. Invent the formulas, models, and re-ranking approaches and build working versions yourself. Iterate and reformulate quickly, then collaborate with engineering to productionize what proves out.
- Iterate visual and color approaches. Evaluate image-based search and color matching, including perceptual color, and decide what is right for us.
- Measure what matters. Build and extend evaluation frameworks and success metrics so we know whether a change actually helped, and design experiments as traffic grows.
- Collaborate across functions. Work closely with product, engineering, and catalog to turn research into shipped improvements.

## What you'll need

- A track record building search, recommendations, or ranking systems that shipped to real users and moved the numbers. You have done this work before, not just studied it.
- An advanced degree in a quantitative field such as computer science, machine learning, statistics, or applied math, or equivalent hands-on experience that got you to the same place.
- Deep understanding of search and recommendation systems, especially retrieval, ranking, and relevance. This is the core of the role.
- Strong query understanding and NLP, including semantic and embedding-based retrieval.
- Real exploratory and experimental rigor: statistical modeling, experimental design, and hypothesis testing, plus comfort working in ambiguity where the right approach is not yet known.
- Hands-on building ability. You prototype and implement your own ideas. We do not care which language you are strongest in.
- Some experience deploying ML or data systems to production, or partnering closely on it.

## Nice to have

- Experience with multimodal or image-based search, and with color or perceptual science.
- E-commerce or marketplace search and recommendations experience.
- Experience managing vendor and home-grown systems in conjunction with one another.

## Why this role is unusual and exciting

Most search science roles plug into a mature stack with the strategy already decided. This one does not. You set the approach, build it, and prove it, with a clear runway toward owning more of the search and recommendations system over time. If you want the surface area of a founding scientist for a search function inside an established, well-funded company, this is that.

What you’ll get from us:

- Our people: We are a growth-driven team that values efficiency, builds smart automation, operates in small empowered teams, and moves quickly from idea to execution.
- Relaxation and Celebrations: Flexible PTO, Sick Days, Paid National Holidays, and even more (ask us about this when we connect).
- Health Benefits: We contribute to your medical, dental, vision and short-term/long-term disability plans and have a strong employee assistance program.
- Plan for your Retirement: 401(k) eligible after your first 90 day's employed!
- Giving Back: We sponsor multiple events throughout the year to help out our communities.
- Growth: We’ll help you take your career to the next level. We want you to be creative and take initiative which will allow you to grow and create within the company. Most importantly, be the best at what matters!
- Flexible Work Schedules: With business units and employees across the globe, Material Technologies has embraced a hybrid  working model allowing department leaders to decide on the best approach for their respective teams, whether that be remote, in person, or a little of both.

Material Bank is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity, and all applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, veteran or disability status or other status protected under any applicable federal, state or local law.

## About Material Bank

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Material Bank is the world’s largest material marketplace that enables architects and designers to search, sample, and specify design materials with free, carbon-neutral overnight delivery.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series D; $325M+ total funding)
- **Headquarters**: Miami, Florida, USA (with offices in Boca Raton, FL; Paris, France; Olive Branch, MS; and a New York office coming soon)
- **Founded**: 2019
- **Founders**: Adam I. Sandow (Founder & CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Design Services, Architectural & Interior Design Materials Marketplace, Logistics
- **Target customers**: B2B — architects, interior designers, and design firms (120,000+ registered users); also serves manufacturers (500+ leading brands) seeking to get products specified
- **Mission or purpose**: To redefine the future of design by making the material search, sampling, and specification process fast, sustainable, and centralized — committed to net zero by 2040, 100% carbon neutral since 2020.

## Products & Services
- **Material Search & Sampling Platform**: A web-based marketplace where designers can search 500,000+ products across 300+ categories from 650+ brands. Orders placed by midnight ET are shipped in a single box and delivered by 10:30 AM the next day — always free for designers.
- **Brand Discovery & Specification**: Tools for designers to save materials, create boards, collaborate with colleagues, and communicate directly with brand representatives for product details, lead times, and quotes.
- **Manufacturer Services**: Brand exposure to 100,000+ design professionals, leads on-demand, sample reclamation, and massive brand awareness — all to help manufacturers drive specification.
- **Sustainability Initiatives**: Carbon-neutral shipping, sample reclamation, and a CEU webinar series (“Design Your Impact”) on sustainable specifying.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: $325M+ total funding (latest round: $175M in 2022)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not fully disclosed but backed by major venture firms (TechCrunch reported $28M Series A in 2021; $175M round in 2022). Partners include 500+ leading brands like Armstrong Flooring, Kimball International, and others.
- **Growth Signals**: 120,000+ registered users, 560,000+ separate design projects, 33,000+ design firms & corporations, 500+ leading brands, 4.2M+ packages saved from being sent via consolidation. Expanded globally with a European launch in 2023. Recognized by Forbes as one of America’s Best Startup Employers in 2026.

## Competitive Advantages
- **One-box logistics moat**: Proprietary logistics network consolidates samples from hundreds of brands into a single overnight delivery — a massive operational moat that competitors cannot easily replicate.
- **Network effects**: As more designers join, more manufacturers want to list; as more brands list, the platform becomes more valuable to designers.
- **Sustainability leadership**: 100% carbon neutral since 2020 and committed to net zero by 2040 — a strong differentiator in an industry increasingly focused on environmental impact.
- **Speed & convenience**: Overnight delivery of physical samples from hundreds of brands — unmatched in the design industry.

## Strategic Focus
- **Global expansion**: Launched in Europe in 2023 (Paris office), signaling international growth.
- **Product expansion**: Moving beyond sampling into brand discovery, specification, and human connection — becoming a full lifecycle platform for design professionals.
- **Sustainability**: Deepening commitment to net zero, sample reclamation, and sustainable specifying education.
- **AI & data**: Actively hiring Senior Data & AI Engineer and Applied AI Engineer, suggesting investment in AI-powered search, recommendations, and logistics optimization.

## Why Work Here
- **Remote-friendly culture**: “Remote-friendly but maintain a global presence for in-person collaboration” — most roles are remote, with hubs in South Florida, Paris, and Mississippi.
- **Comprehensive benefits**: Full medical/dental/vision (some plans at 100% coverage), flexible PTO, company-wide break last week of December, 12 weeks paid parental leave, 401(k) with 100% match up to 4%, FSA/HSA, monthly remote stipend, employee referral bonuses, LifeMart discounts.
- **People-first values**: Leadership principles include “We care,” “We team,” “We grow,” “We build,” “We ask,” “We run” — emphasizing ownership, curiosity, speed, and collaboration.
- **Engineering culture**: Small but mighty technical team (25 people, 11% of workforce) with focus on data, AI, and platform engineering. Current openings include Senior Data & AI Engineer and Applied AI Engineer.
- **Growth trajectory**: $325M+ funded, expanding globally, recognized by Forbes as Best Startup Employer — high growth with stability.
- **Mission-driven**: Working on sustainability (net zero by 2040) and transforming a legacy industry — appealing to purpose-driven talent.
- **Employer rating**: 3.6/5.0 on LinkedIn (81 reviews), with compensation rated 4.1/5.0, culture 3.2, work-life 3.0, career 3.3.

## Sources
1. [materialbank.com](https://www.materialbank.com/)
2. [careers.materialbank.com](https://careers.materialbank.com/careers)
3. [careers.materialbank.com/about](https://careers.materialbank.com/careers/about)
4. [linkedin.com/company/materialbank](https://www.linkedin.com/company/materialbank)
5. [TechCrunch (2021) - $28M Series A](https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/17/material-bank-a-logistics-platform-for-sourcing-architectural-and-design-samples-raises-28m/)
6. [Business of Home (2022) - $175M round](https://businessofhome.com/articles/material-bank-raises-175-million)

## Other roles at Material Bank

- [Sr. Material Research](https://feeny.ai/job/sr-material-research-material-bank-south-florida-boston-ma-kmtmgrdvh19h) — South Florida / Boston, MA
- [Senior Account Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-account-executive-material-bank-remote-b468cwppz1gn)
- [Lead MarTech Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/lead-martech-engineer-material-bank-remote-03778d4620gp)
- [Lead Front End Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/lead-front-end-engineer-material-bank-remote-j8v42pj7fpwb)
- [Associate Creative Director](https://feeny.ai/job/associate-creative-director-material-bank-remote-8yv90cqnzzw1)
- [Legal Counsel, Privacy & Product](https://feeny.ai/job/legal-counsel-privacy-product-material-bank-remote-vdh6g7ehp6ye)
- [Sr. People Operations Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/sr-people-operations-specialist-material-bank-boca-raton-vs725zat8r7b) — Boca Raton, FL
- [Director, Mobility Partnerships](https://feeny.ai/job/director-mobility-partnerships-material-bank-london-tbrpvw6zppr4) — London, United Kingdom
- [Field Team Associate](https://feeny.ai/job/field-team-associate-material-bank-remote-xmsw2w0qbvfv)
- [Brand Partner Enablement Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/brand-partner-enablement-specialist-material-bank-remote-q7639ms5xwmc)