Staff ML Engineer

State Farm•Dunwoody, GA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

State Farm is seeking a hands-on Staff Machine Learning Engineer to architect, build, and scale enterprise-grade AI/ML systems, real-time decisioning capabilities, and agentic AI applications. The role will help develop a next-generation Next Best Action (NBA) and recommendation platform using Databricks, AWS, and modern AI/ML technologies. Its focus is ML systems engineering, architecture, and productionization rather than developing predictive models from scratch. The engineer will design scalable production ML systems, APIs, feature pipelines, and reusable engineering components; architect real-time or near-real-time decisioning systems; create feedback mechanisms to improve recommendations; and develop reliable data and ML pipelines. The role also covers MLOps and production-grade agentic AI applications, while providing technical leadership through architecture decisions, engineering standards, mentoring, and cross-functional collaboration. This is a hybrid position. Qualified candidates must live or relocate within 180 miles of a hub in Bloomington, Illinois; Dunwoody, Georgia; Richardson, Texas; or Tempe, Arizona, and should expect to work both from home and in the office. Applicants must be eligible to work lawfully in the United States immediately; State Farm will not sponsor U.S. work authorization for this opportunity.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in ML engineering, software engineering, or related technical disciplines, with demonstrated technical leadership.
Expert-level Python and strong SQL skills, with experience in APIs, microservices, and production software development.
Expert-level PySpark and Apache Spark skills, with experience building reliable data and feature pipelines.
Deep hands-on Databricks expertise, including Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, and Workflows, and strong AWS experience, including S3, IAM, compute, and application integration.
Experience supporting the full production ML lifecycle, including model integration, deployment, serving, monitoring, versioning, and retraining; familiarity with MLflow and CI/CD.
Experience building low-latency inference services, decisioning APIs, and scalable recommendation systems.
Hands-on experience developing LLM-powered or agentic AI applications, including orchestration, tool calling, and enterprise integrations.
Proven ability to independently architect and deliver complex, reliable enterprise systems.
Must be eligible to lawfully work in the U.S. immediately; employer sponsorship for U.S. work authorization is not available.
Must live or relocate within 180 miles of a listed hub location and work in a hybrid environment.

Nice To Haves

Hands-on experience developing or training ML models.
Experience building Next Best Action, recommendation, personalization, or decision optimization platforms.
Familiarity with contextual bandits, reinforcement learning, uplift modeling, or ranking algorithms.
Experience with LangGraph, LangChain, or similar agentic AI frameworks.
Experience in insurance, financial services, or other regulated industries.

Responsibilities

Design and build scalable, production-grade ML systems, APIs, feature pipelines, and reusable engineering components.
Architect real-time or near-real-time decisioning systems that integrate predictive models, business rules, eligibility, prioritization, and optimization.
Build feedback mechanisms to capture customer interactions and business outcomes and continuously improve recommendations.
Develop reliable data and ML pipelines using Python, PySpark, SQL, Databricks, and AWS.
Implement model deployment, serving, versioning, monitoring, CI/CD, and retraining workflows.
Architect and develop production-grade agentic AI applications, including LLM orchestration, tool integration, evaluation, and guardrails.
Lead architecture decisions, establish engineering standards, mentor engineers, and collaborate across technical and business teams.

Benefits

Potential yearly incentive pay up to 15% of base salary.
Annual raises and bonuses.
Health and wellbeing programs, with State Farm paying most of the healthcare premium and multiple healthcare plan options.
Vision, dental, telemedicine, 24/7 mental health professionals, and other healthcare offerings.
Industry-leading training programs, tuition assistance, employee resource groups, and mentoring.
Fertility, IVF, and adoption assistance; college coaching; national discount programs; financial workshops and coaching.
Time-off policies, including the opportunity to initially earn up to 20 days annually, parental leave, paid holidays, a celebration day, life leave, bereavement leave, and community service and education support days.
Matching Gift Program, Good Neighbor Grant Program, and Employee Assistance Fund.
401(k) plan with company contributions of up to 7% of salary.
Standard 38:45-hour work week.