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Senior Applied Research Scientist – Personalization

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Remote from
UK, Sweden
Salary
Undisclosed
Employment
Full Time
Experience
Senior
Published
Apply before
17 Nov 2026
Listing views
36
Application actions
4
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AI Summary

The role, at a glance.

Spotify is seeking a senior applied research scientist to advance generative speech technology within its Personalization Speak team. The role focuses on developing speech synthesis, speech recognition, and speech-to-speech models using modern deep-learning architectures and rigorous evaluation methods. The scientist will work across research, data, infrastructure, and engineering to convert validated ideas into scalable production capabilities. Candidates need a PhD plus professional ML research experience, strong Python and PyTorch skills, and expertise in generative modeling for speech, audio, NLP, or related domains. The position is based in London or Stockholm with flexibility for remote work and periodic in-person meetings.

Role DNA

A quick view of the complexity, pace, ownership and collaboration implied by the job description.

Job Complexity

5/5
EasyHard

Pace & Pressure

4/5
RelaxedFast-paced

Autonomy Level

4/5
GuidedFull ownership

Communication Load

5/5
IndependentCollaborative
AI insightThis is an advanced research role requiring doctoral-level machine learning expertise and practical experience creating novel generative architectures for speech. It also demands the ability to productionize research in collaboration with engineering and data teams at platform scale.

Salary analysis

Estimated compensation compared with the broader US market for similar roles.

Estimated job median (per year)Market rate
$190,000
US market range (per year)$170k–$230k
AI insightThe yearly pay period is inferred from the job context; it was not explicitly stated by the employer. No employer salary was disclosed. The yearly cadence and USD market estimate are inferred for a senior applied research scientist specializing in generative speech and machine learning; actual compensation will vary by London or Stockholm location, level, and total-equity structure.

Core skills

Skills and capabilities most closely associated with this opportunity.

Sample interview questions
Describe a generative speech model you developed and the core technical decisions behind it.

I would explain the model architecture, representation choices such as acoustic tokens or codecs, training objective, data preparation, and evaluation metrics. I would also describe the trade-offs I made between quality, latency, robustness, and serving cost.

How would you evaluate emotional expressiveness and naturalness in a speech-synthesis system?

I would combine objective measures with carefully designed human listening studies. Objective checks could include intelligibility, speaker similarity, prosody-related measures, and artifact detection, while subjective tests would assess naturalness, emotional appropriateness, preference, and consistency across diverse prompts.

What challenges arise when moving a research speech model into production?

Key challenges include inference latency, model size, reliability across accents and noisy inputs, data governance, monitoring, and reproducible deployment. I would work with engineering to define service-level targets early, optimize the model and runtime, and establish quality monitoring and rollback mechanisms.

How would you decide whether to use a transformer, diffusion model, GAN, or flow-matching approach for a new speech-generation problem?

I would start with product requirements such as latency, controllability, output fidelity, available data, and compute budget. I would then establish strong baselines and run targeted experiments, comparing quality, stability, sampling speed, and generalization before selecting an approach.

Tell us about a time you communicated complex research findings to non-technical stakeholders.

I would frame the problem in terms of user or business impact, avoid unnecessary mathematical detail, and use concise visualizations or audio examples to demonstrate results. I would clearly state the confidence level, limitations, recommended decision, and next validation step.

This analysis is generated from the job description. Salary estimates, role characteristics and sample answers are guidance, not employer-provided facts.
Opportunity details

About this role.

The Personalization team makes deciding what to play next easier and more enjoyable for every listener. From Blend to Discover Weekly, we’re behind some of Spotify’s most-loved features. We built them by understanding the world of music and podcasts better than anyone else. Join us and you’ll keep millions of users listening by making great recommendations to each and every one of them.

Within Personalization, the Speak Team owns the development of Spotify’s state-of-the-art speech models, contributing to speech recognition, speech synthesis, and speech-to-speech models. We craft voice models that match human-level emotional expressiveness, so we can deeply engage our listeners and support creators at scale. Our groundbreaking work on speech synthesis relies on state-of-the-art deep learning methods and evaluation techniques, highly efficient data processing and model serving, and capturing audio of outstanding quality from our voice talent pool.

We’re looking for a senior applied research scientist with experience in developing novel ML techniques and architectures and with a strong interest in working across a full production pipeline to produce state-of-the-art generative conversational speech-to-speech models. You’ll collaborate with our engineering teams to help develop our production pipelines, explore new ideas and methods to improve quality, understanding and realism, as well as push the frontiers of what is possible with our speech technology.

What You’ll Do

  • Develop and experiment with new methods for speech synthesis and speech recognition, along with end-to-end approaches, building on the latest research and ideas.
  • Work towards the expansion of our speech use-cases targeting different markets and products.
  • Be part of a highly motivated research team dedicated to building and creating models at scale to power the Spotify platform.
  • Champion best practices for research and development, sharing your knowledge and experience with other researchers within Speak.
  • Collaborate with our engineering and data teams on ideas requiring new infrastructure or new high-quality data, as well as to help improve our speech recognition and speech synthesis pipelines, and help turn proven ideas into scalable products.

Who You Are

  • You have a strong background in ML (PhD degree on top of professional experience), and experience in working with any of the following: transformers, GANs, diffusion models, flow matching, VAEs, audio codecs.
  • You have experience in developing generative models for speech synthesis, speech recognition, audio/music, natural language processing, or computer vision.
  • You have strong experience with Python, particularly PyTorch.
  • You have strong communication skills and the ability to explain technical ideas with clarity to technical and non-technical people alike.
  • You have experience in an academic or professional setting conducting high-quality research.

Where You’ll Be

  • This role is based in London or Stockholm.
  • We offer you the flexibility to work where you work best! There will be some in person meetings, but still allows for flexibility to work from home

Compensation

Additional Information

Spotify is an equal opportunity employer. You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what’s playing in your headphones. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all thrive, contribute, and be forward-thinking! So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It’s in our differences that we will find the power to keep revolutionizing the way the world listens.

At Spotify, we are passionate about inclusivity and making sure our entire recruitment process is accessible to everyone. We have ways to request reasonable accommodations during the interview process and help assist in what you need. If you need accommodations at any stage of the application or interview process, please let us know – we’re here to support you in any way we can.

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