Computer Vision Research Engineer (Modeling)

Job Title

The NBA currently provides eligible employees the option of working remotely one day per week.

Position Description

The Automated Officiating team at the NBA is seeking an experienced applied scientist / research engineer with a strong foundation in Computer Vision and Machine Learning. This is a senior position, and candidates ideally have Technical Leadership experience related to the development and deployment of advanced computer vision capabilities applied to highly ambiguous problems.

This is a research engineering position and ideal candidates will bring considerable expertise in applying state of the art computer vision techniques to reason about scene and player level semantics, player actions and intent, player and ball tracking, and 3D reconstruction and mesh tracking of dynamic objects, with the ultimate goal of building a high accuracy system that is able to make live calls for objective violations using cameras and other sensing modalities. We are looking for candidates that have the skills and aptitude to work on highly complex and ambiguous problems and are excited to contribute to all aspects of a real-world perception system, from building sensing pipelines to scalable ML data, training, modeling and evaluation pipelines.

This team sits within Basketball Strategy & Growth, and its primary goal is to develop advanced, multi-modal officiating capabilities to enhance call accuracy, streamline game flow, and provide decision-making consistency and transparency. This is a small team that works like a startup within the NBA and provides significant opportunities for ownership and accelerated learning and growth.

This role will report to the Engineering Lead and play a critical role in taking the Automated Officiating Product from 0 to 1.

Group Summary

The Basketball Strategy & Growth department is responsible for data collection, analysis and technology pertaining to all on-court activities. The group, in partnership with Referee Operations, oversees the Game Review Program to help drive improvements in referee performance and rules clarification initiatives. Basketball Strategy & Growth also leads pivotal initiatives focused on innovating and improving the NBA game, such as rules changes, improvements to the competition format and implementation of technologies to improve player health, game integrity and fan engagement.

The Automated Officiating team is a new function within the Basketball Strategy & Growth department. This team is focused on innovating the on-court product through internally developed and deployed technologies. They spearhead key officiating technology initiatives from concept to launch, leveraging their cross-discipline expertise in real-time perception and sensing, computer vision, machine learning, and data analytics. The primary near-term focus of this team is deploying a system that can automatically detect and determine objective calls (e.g., out-of-bounds) in real-time during live NBA games.

Major Responsibilities

• Designing, implementing, and deploying state-of-the-art tracking, 3D reconstruction and geometry estimation, scene understanding, and visual recognition systems.
• Playing a role in defining the technical strategy, actively look for problem areas, and proactively propose solutions.
• Being a leader and an advocate for good ML design principles and software development practices.
• Staying up to date with the latest literature, technologies, and best practices in computer vision, machine learning, and multi-modal foundation models.
• Providing technical guidance and mentorship to other engineers on the team.
• Making technical contributions across the automated officiating system (e.g. sensor pipelines, ML data pipelines, training, model development, and evaluation pipelines).
• Being a guardian of the codebase and push for clean, well-tested and highly extensible code.

Qualifications

• Masters, or Ph.D in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Math or related field (or equivalent professional experience).
• Proven track record to design and implement solutions using modern ML architecture.
• Experience leading projects and driving execution of complex and ambiguous initiatives.
• Proven track record of breaking complex and ambiguous problems into understandable chunks, and mapping to applicable modern solutions.
• Demonstrated proficiency building and deploying machine learning solutions to production.
• Exposure to the entire ML stack, from data pipelines to model inference.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and adaptability in a fast-paced environment.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

Bonus Qualifications

• Technical Leadership experience with medium sized teams and proven record of shipping production vision models.
• Proven experience leading projects and delivering solutions for real-world perception challenges (e.g., AR/VR, autonomous robots, drones).
• Strong C++ programming skills (or another equivalent compiled on-board language), with a history of optimizing and deploying performance-critical systems.
• Experience with production ML systems, including scalable data pipelines, training infrastructure, model evaluation and/or deployment.
• Familiarity with computer vision libraries, model deployment (TensorRT, ONNX) and GPU acceleration frameworks.
• Strong grasp of low-latency, high-throughput system design, distributed task management systems and scalable model serving & deployment architectures.
• Exposure to CUDA, parallel computing, or high-performance programming on GPUs.
• Passion for basketball and familiarity with officiating rules.

Salary Range: $245,000 - $330,000

Employees currently are eligible to receive an annual discretionary performance bonus, awarded at the sole discretion of the Company and subject to any terms and conditions set by the Company. Employees and/or eligible dependents may be eligible to participate in the following Company-sponsored employee benefit programs: medical; dental; vision; life/AD&D insurance; short- and long-term disability; fertility and family-forming assistance; wellbeing allowance; educational assistance; mental health coaching/therapy; tax advantaged accounts such as HSA and healthcare/dependent care FSAs; a 401(k) retirement plan; and time off benefits that include vacation, sick time, and personal days.

We Consider Applicants For All Positions On The Basis Of Merit, Qualifications And Business Needs, And Without Regard To Race, Color, National Origin, Religion, Sex, Gender Identity, Age, Disability, Alienage Or Citizenship Status, Ancestry, Marital Status, Creed, Genetic Predisposition Or Carrier Status, Sexual Orientation, 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.

The NBA is committed to providing a safe and healthy workplace. To safeguard our employees and their families, our visitors, and the broader community from COVID-19, and in consideration of recommendations from health authorities and the NBA's own advisors, any individual working onsite in our New York and New Jersey offices must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The NBA will discuss accommodations for individuals who cannot be vaccinated due to a medical reason or sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance.

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 214 countries and territories in 60 languages, and merchandise for sale in more than 200 countries and territories on all seven continents. NBA rosters at the start of the 2024-25 season featured a record-tying 125 international players from a record-tying 43 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 more than 2.3 billion likes and followers globally across all leagues, team and player platforms. NBA Cares, the NBA's global social responsibility platform, partners with renowned community-based organizations around the world to address important social issues in the areas of education, inclusion, youth and family development, and health and wellness.