Lead ML Engineer for Vector Search & Multimodal Platform

Jobtailor; California (MO); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Firefly Foundry is seeking an experienced senior engineer to design and oversee scalable data-processing pipelines and a hybrid search stack. You will drive architecture for vector and lexical retrieval, enforce data governance, and partner with ML and product teams to deliver enterprise-grade intelligence.

We value deep ownership, strong Python skills, and experience with multi-tenant, observability-focused platforms. Remote-friendly with enterprise-scale data challenges.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in machine learning, data, or infrastructure engineering.
• Deep ownership of large-scale data processing and/or search systems in production.
• Track record of leading systems and setting technical direction across teams.

Responsibilities

• Design and build scalable data-processing pipelines transforming media and signals into structured intel.
• Architect indexing and search infrastructure for hybrid lexical and vector retrieval.
• Own platform performance, latency, and cost with SLAs and tuning.
• Lead technically across teams, mentor engineers, and set architectural standards.
• Collaborate with ML, product, and platform teams to drive roadmaps.
• Build deployment, observability, and monitoring across data and search systems.

Skills

Vector/ANN Retrieval

Large-Scale Data Processing

Python Programming

Go/Rust/C++

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS/Azure

ML Engineering

Search and Retrieval Systems

Mentoring/Technical Leadership

Education

MS or PhD in Computer Science or Computer Engineering

Tools

PyTorch

CI/CD

AWS

Azure

Vector databases

Job description

Firefly Foundry is seeking an experienced senior engineer to design and oversee scalable data-processing pipelines and a hybrid search stack. You will drive architecture for vector and lexical retrieval, enforce data governance, and partner with ML and product teams to deliver enterprise-grade intelligence.

We value deep ownership, strong Python skills, and experience with multi-tenant, observability-focused platforms. Remote-friendly with enterprise-scale data challenges.