Senior Machine Learning Engineer, User Signal & Ads

NewsBreak • Bellevue, WA

4d

About The Position

NewsBreak is seeking an experienced Senior Machine Learning Engineer to join the User Signal team, which is central to their in-house advertising platform. This role involves designing and building the data and ML systems that transform raw user signals into production targeting and bidding features. It's a hands-on, high-ownership position that combines ML modeling, large-scale data engineering, and production ML systems. The engineer will own significant pieces of the signal-to-model pipeline end-to-end, including defining and building features at scale, developing models for user understanding (especially identity prediction), and applying these predictions directly within ads targeting, bidding, and ranking models to drive measurable lift. The role requires closing the loop by ensuring everything is served online with the freshness, latency, and reliability demanded by real-time bidding. Collaboration with Ads, Data, and Infra teams is expected, along with driving technical direction. NewsBreak is a fast-growing company, recognized by Fast Company and Great Place to Work® certified, with a mission to build the infrastructure layer for content intelligence.

Requirements

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or a related quantitative field (or equivalent practical experience).
• 5+ years of industry experience as an ML engineer / applied scientist, building and shipping ML models in production (not just research or offline prototyping).
• Strong foundation in machine learning: feature engineering, supervised learning, embeddings/representation learning, and offline + online evaluation methodology.
• Proficiency in Python and a solid ML stack (e.g. PyTorch or TensorFlow, scikit-learn, pandas/NumPy).
• Hands-on experience with large-scale data processing for ML — e.g. Spark, Flink, SQL/Presto/Trino — including building production feature or training-data pipelines.
• Experience taking models from idea to production: training, deployment, monitoring, and iterating based on real metrics and A/B tests.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, and the ability to reason about model behavior, data quality, and business impact end to end.

Nice To Haves

• Direct experience in Ads, recommendation, search, or growth ML — especially targeting, bidding, ranking, CTR/CVR prediction, or identity prediction.
• Experience with user-signal / behavioral data: event pipelines, identity prediction, user embeddings, and applying model outputs back into downstream ranking/bidding models.
• Familiarity with online feature serving — feature stores, embedding/vector stores, and low-latency, high-QPS inference for real-time bidding.
• Experience with streaming systems (Kafka, Flink, Spark Streaming) for real-time feature computation.
• Knowledge of the big-data ecosystem (Hadoop, Spark, Hive, Presto/Trino) and modern ML platforms / MLOps tooling (training orchestration, experiment tracking, model registries, feature stores).
• Experience with large-scale / distributed model training and inference optimization (e.g. distributed training, embedding tables, quantization, efficient serving).
• A track record of measurable business impact (revenue, ROAS, CTR/CVR lift) from ML work, and of driving technical direction across teams.

Responsibilities

• Build user-signal features at scale: design, implement, and own offline and online feature pipelines (batch + streaming) that turn raw user events into high-quality targeting and bidding features.
• Develop user-understanding models — especially identity prediction: build and improve models such as identity prediction, user/content embeddings, intent and conversion prediction, and signal-quality / value models that feed ads targeting and bidding.
• Apply model outputs inside ads models: integrate identity-prediction results and other user signals directly into the ads targeting, bidding, and ranking models — owning the impact all the way to revenue, not just the upstream features.
• Own the model lifecycle: data preparation, feature engineering, training, offline/online evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and iteration — with rigorous A/B testing and clear business metrics (CTR, CVR, ROAS, revenue).
• Bridge modeling and serving: ensure features and model outputs are available online with the freshness and low latency required by high-QPS real-time bidding, working across feature stores, embedding stores, and serving infra.
• Improve signal quality and coverage: identify gaps, biases, and freshness issues in user signals; build the data quality, labeling, and validation systems that keep features trustworthy.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Ads ranking/bidding, Data, and Platform teams to align signal and feature design with downstream model and business needs.
• Provide technical leadership: drive design reviews, set best practices for ML and feature engineering, mentor engineers, and raise the quality bar for the team.

Benefits

• Health, dental, and vision care for you and your family (100% coverage for employee)
• Top-tier 401(K) plan with company matching
• Paid time off and paid holidays
• FSA, HSA and commuter benefits programs
• Team activity budget
• Competitive compensation and benefits
• Discretionary bonus and options (depending on position)

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior