Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning - Basketball Data

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At the NBA, we’re passionate about growing and celebrating the game of basketball. Through the intensity of the game and the amazing athletic skill of our players, we deliver excitement to hundreds of millions of fans worldwide.

As a global sports and media business, the NBA is so much more. While Basketball Operations runs the league’s on-court activities, other departments manage relationships with television and digital media partners, develop marketing partnerships with some of the world’s most recognizable companies, oversee the licensing of NBA merchandise, and handle a wide range of responsibilities that drive the NBA’s success.

Position Summary:

The NBA is looking for a Senior Machine Learning Engineer passionate about designing and implementing technologies for the basketball industry. You will join the team responsible for ingesting player skeletal tracking data, generating new metrics based on the data and serving those insights to fans, broadcasters, NBA teams and groups within the league office in real-time.As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer, you will be responsible for developing models and algorithms with high accuracy and low latency and have the opportunity to influence the innovation of products that reach millions of fans globally. The team is looking for an engineer who can wear a lot of hats and is excited about working in a dynamic, results-oriented environment.

Major Responsibility:

• Design, prototype, implement, evaluate, optimize and monitor machine learning algorithms/infrastructure to generate basketball data and insights with high accuracy and low latency
• Maintain and promote best practices for software development, including deployment process, documentation and coding standards
• Collaborate with backend engineers on developing/maintaining real-time data pipelines
• Contribute to technical and product discussions
• Understand requirements and design/deliver solutions with little direction

Required Skills/Knowledge:

• 5+ years of experience implementing machine-learning algorithms in production workflows
• Experience working with data pipelines, real-time systems, high-performance computing
• Understanding of big data concepts and knowledge of big data languages/tools such as Spark or Flink
• Interest in basketball and a deep understanding of the game's various actions
• Experience working with spatiotemporal data
• Exposure to Event Driven systems, patterns and best practices and experience working with messaging queues (Kafka or similar)
• Strong communication skills when discussing technical concepts with technical and non-technical colleagues
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills paired with the ability to develop creative and efficient solutions
• Flexibility/available to work outside of regular work hours, as needed to test code during live games and/or support games/events
• Nice to Have: Experience working with player tracking data in sports for real-time use cases

Education:

• Bachelor's Degree Required

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The NBA considers applicants for all positions on the basis of merit, qualifications, and business needs, and without regard to race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, alienage or citizenship status, ancestry, marital status, genetic predisposition or carrier status, veteran status, familial status, status as a victim of domestic violence, or any other status or characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.
 

About the NBA
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a global sports and media organization with the mission to inspire and connect people everywhere through the power of basketball.  Built around five professional sports leagues:  the NBA, WNBA, NBA G League, NBA 2K League and Basketball Africa League, the NBA has established a major international presence with games and programming available in 215 countries and territories in more than 50 languages, and merchandise for sale in more than 200 countries and territories on all seven continents.  NBA rosters at the start of the 2021-22 season featured a record 121 international players from 40 countries.  NBA Digital’s assets include NBA TV, NBA.com, the NBA App and NBA League Pass.  The NBA has created one of the largest social media communities in the world, with 2.1 billion likes and followers globally across all league, team, and player platforms.  Through NBA Cares, the league addresses important social issues by working with internationally recognized youth-serving organizations that support education, youth and family development, and health-related causes.