Head of ML for Search & Recommendations

Upwork; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 211,250 - 340,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Unlimited PTO

401(k) with matching

12 weeks parental leave

Employee Stock Purchase Plan

Job summary

Upwork Inc. in the United States is seeking a senior leader to head the Search & Recommendations engineering organization.

You will set technical direction, scale core systems, and guide experiences from search and browse to AI-native surfaces. This high-impact role partners with product, ML, data science, design, and executive leadership to drive platform health, reliability, and business outcomes while building a diverse, high-performing team.

Qualifications

• Significant experience leading engineering teams in high-scale environments.
• Experience delivering search, recommendations, ranking, or retrieval systems.
• Ability to mentor senior engineers and managers and partner with product, data science, and leadership.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the technical strategy for Upwork’s Search & Recommendations platform.
• Lead, grow, and develop a high-performing organization of software and ML engineers.
• Deliver a unified platform powering matching experiences across client and talent journeys.
• Modernize search infrastructure with scalable, high-performance architectures and clear APIs.
• Partner with product, ML, data science, design, and leadership to prioritize roadmaps.
• Champion engineering excellence with reliability, latency, data integrity, and responsible AI.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Distributed systems

Machine learning

Search systems

Mentoring engineers

Cross-functional collaboration

AI-native workflows

Job description

Upwork Inc. in the United States is seeking a senior leader to head the Search & Recommendations engineering organization.

You will set technical direction, scale core systems, and guide experiences from search and browse to AI-native surfaces. This high-impact role partners with product, ML, data science, design, and executive leadership to drive platform health, reliability, and business outcomes while building a diverse, high-performing team.