Senior Research Scientist - Phish and Spam Detection

Senior Research Scientist – Phish and Spam Detection (Finance)

Yahoo Mail is the ultimate consumer inbox with hundreds of millions of users. It’s the best way to access your email and stay organized from a computer, phone or tablet.

The Mail Intelligence platform builds next-generation platforms and services that enable Yahoo to deliver deeply personalized content to its users wherever they are and whatever mode of consumption they are using. By processing billions of mail messages (data in tune of several petabytes), we apply cutting-edge algorithms to extract information, build knowledge, and interconnect information from different sources to deliver a great experience to our users.

Building this knowledge presents challenges in natural language processing, machine learning techniques, and big data processing at petabyte scale. You will build tools and workflows to make it easier to manage and act on this vast information, and apply your insights on the data to build innovative consumer applications for Yahoo.

• You are an expert in developing and applying state-of-the-art machine learning and deep learning models to solve complex problems.
• You thrive in a research-oriented environment and enjoy pushing the boundaries of innovation to deliver impactful solutions.
• You have a strong academic foundation and are passionate about the domains of phishing/spam detection using machine learning in large-scale systems.
• You excel in transforming theoretical research into practical applications, preferably in the domains of phishing and spam detection, classification tasks, and Natural Language Processing (NLP).
• You are a hands‑on expert with experience in training and evaluating large-scale models, including cutting‑edge deep learning architectures.
• You have a collaborative mindset, excellent communication skills, and the ability to contribute to a high-performing team in a fast-paced environment.

• Conduct research to develop and advance innovative algorithms for phishing and spam detection tailored to large-scale email inboxes.
• Design, train, evaluate, and optimize state-of-the-art ML models for anti-phishing and anti-spam classification, including transformer-based models like BERT, RoBERTa, LLM-driven techniques and knowledge distillation.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate machine learning models into production systems and drive business impact.
• Develop scalable workflows for processing and analyzing large-scale datasets.
• Stay abreast of the latest research trends and contribute to the team’s thought leadership through publications, patents, or presentations.
• Participate in the design and execution of experiments to validate model effectiveness.
• Mentor and guide junior team members in research and development efforts.

• PhD (preferred) or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, or a related field.
• 5+ years of experience in machine learning, deep learning, or related fields, with hands‑on expertise in phishing/spam classification, LLM prompting, distillation, or NLP.
• Strong fundamentals in machine learning and deep learning, with solid expertise in model training and evaluation.
• Comprehensive understanding of deep learning models and architectures, including transformer-based and generative models.

• Hands‑on experience with Python and frameworks like Tensor Flow or PyTorch.
• Hands‑on experience with Huggingface, Pandas, and Num Py.
• Demonstrated problem-solving skills and ability to translate complex concepts into actionable solutions.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with a proven ability to work in a team-oriented environment.

• Exposure to cloud platforms such as GCP or AWS
• Familiarity with large-scale data processing and analysis tools.
• Contributions to the research community through publications.
• Understanding of statistical methods and exploratory data analysis.

The material job duties and responsibilities of this role include those listed above as well as adhering to Yahoo policies; exercising sound judgment; working effectively, safely and inclusively with others; exhibiting trustworthiness and meeting expectations;…