Internship - Search Machine Learning Engineer

Perplexity; Greater London; On-site; GBP 27,000 - 31,000; Full time

Job summary

Perplexity in London is seeking a Search Machine Learning Engineer Intern to help build the next generation of advanced search technologies, focusing on retrieval and ranking. This full-time internship lasts 12 to 24 weeks and is in-person in the London office.

You will work with experienced engineers to run experiments, design and implement components of the search platform, and train models for retrieval, ranking and classification tasks, including LLM-based approaches.

Qualifications

• Strong foundation in machine learning and statistics, with coursework or projects related to information retrieval, ranking, or recommender systems.
• Experience with Python and ML frameworks (e.g. PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX) through academic, open source, or personal projects.
• Familiarity with evaluating model quality using offline metrics and/or A/B testing is a plus, but not required.
• Previous experience (internships, research, or significant projects) working on search, recommendation, or NLP is a plus, but not required.
• Self-driven and curious, with a strong sense of ownership, willingness to learn, and comfort working in a fast-paced environment
• Experience with Rust will be a plus

Responsibilities

• Contribute to experiments that improve search quality through better models, data usage, and evaluation tools, under the guidance of senior engineers.
• Design and implement components of the search platform and model stack, including retrieval, ranking, and classification models.
• Train evaluating models (including LLM-based approaches) for retrieval, ranking, and classification tasks.
• Support deployment and monitoring of search and ranking models in a scalable and performant way.
• Help build and iterate on RAG pipelines for grounding and answer generation.
• Collaborate with Data, AI, Infrastructure and Product teams to deliver improvements quickly and learn best practices in production ML.

Skills

Information retrieval

Ranking models

Python

ML frameworks

NLP

A/B testing

Rust

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

JAX

Job description

Perplexity is looking for a Search Machine Learning Engineer Intern to help build the next generation of advanced search technologies, with a focus on retrieval and ranking. You will work closely with experienced engineers to improve search quality, experiment with new models, and ship features that directly impact how users search and discover information. Internship program: 12 - 24 weeks, full-time, in-person in the London office.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to experiments that improve search quality through better models, data usage, and evaluation tools, under the guidance of senior engineers.
• Design and implement components of the search platform and model stack, including retrieval, ranking, and classification models.
• Train evaluating models (including LLM-based approaches) for retrieval, ranking, and classification tasks.
• Support deployment and monitoring of search and ranking models in a scalable and performant way.
• Help build and iterate on RAG pipelines for grounding and answer generation.
• Collaborate with Data, AI, Infrastructure and Product teams to deliver improvements quickly and learn best practices in production ML.

Qualifications

• Strong foundation in machine learning and statistics, with coursework or projects related to information retrieval, ranking, or recommender systems.
• Experience with Python and common ML frameworks (e.g. PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX) through academic, open source, or personal projects.
• Familiarity with evaluating model quality using offline metrics and/or A/B testing is a plus, but not required.
• Previous experience (internships, research, or significant projects) working on search, recommendation, or NLP is a plus, but not required.
• Self-driven and curious, with a strong sense of ownership, willingness to learn, and comfort working in a fast-paced environment
• Experience with Rust will be a plus