Staff Machine Learning Engineer

ZipRecruiter•Santa Monica, CA

7h•$205,000 - $265,000•Hybrid

About The Position

ZipRecruiter is a leading online employment marketplace powered by AI-driven smart matching technology. We are seeking a Staff Machine Learning Engineer / Data Scientist to serve as a technical anchor for our machine learning and AI capabilities. This role reports directly to the Director of Recommendation Systems and will be a core partner in shaping the multi-year ML roadmap, driving foundational algorithmic architecture, and translating complex machine learning research into high-throughput, low-latency production systems. This is a high-visibility role with org-wide reach, involving mentoring Machine Learning Engineers and establishing best practices for ML model development, deployment, and evaluation at scale.

Requirements

8+ years of professional experience developing and deploying machine learning models in large-scale production environments.
Proven track record of architecting and shipping end-to-end ML solutions that serve production traffic at scale.
Deep domain expertise in Recommendation Systems, Personalization, Ranking & Retrieval, or Interaction Prediction.
Strong software engineering fundamentals with hands-on expertise using modern deep learning frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow).
Proven experience in technical leadership and mentorship, driving technical alignment across cross-functional engineering and product teams.
Strong background in statistical modeling, online experimentation (A/B testing methodology), and offline metric design.

Nice To Haves

Experience in Two-Sided Marketplaces: Familiarity with supply/demand liquidity, bilateral matching algorithms, dynamic pricing, or auction-based models.
Modern deep learning techniques for recommendations, such as Two-Tower Neural Networks, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), Transformer-based retrieval models, or Contextual Bandits.
Advanced degree (MS/PhD) in Computer Science, Machine Learning or a related quantitative field or equivalent experience.
Experience with modern MLOps architectures and distributed training frameworks.

Responsibilities

Drive ML Strategy & Roadmap: Partner directly with Engineering and Product Leadership to define and execute the technical vision for core components in the marketplace, including but not limited to recommendation engines and matching algorithms, ML entity representation platform.
Architect High-Scale Systems: Design and own state-of-the-art ML systems handling dynamic interaction prediction, candidate ranking, and candidate/job retrieval across high-throughput production environments.
Optimize Two-Sided Marketplace Dynamics: Solve high-complexity matching and recommendation challenges native to two-sided marketplaces, including real-time intent prediction, bilateral relevancy, candidate cold-start problems, and feedback loops between job seekers and employers.
Org-Wide Technical Leadership: Mentor and guide Machine Learning Engineers and Data Scientists across teams to instill a culture of technical excellence, rigorous experimentation, and fast production delivery.
Production Excellence: Drive end-to-end model ownership—from initial exploration and feature engineering through distributed training, offline/online evaluation (A/B testing), to real-time latency optimization.