Machine Learning Engineer

Wanderboat AI; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Wanderboat AI is hiring ML engineers to build the core intelligence behind search, recommendations, and multimodal retrieval. You will apply machine learning, deep learning, and generative AI to real product challenges at scale, shaping retrieval, ranking, and content understanding to improve user experience and business metrics.

You will work with embeddings, RAG, and multimodal models, turning research ideas into production systems in a fast-moving startup environment.

Qualifications

• Experience applying ML to search, recommendation, ads, feed ranking, or relevance.
• Strong fundamentals in ML, DL, NLP, or multimodal learning.
• Hands-on retrieval, ranking, embeddings, relevance, optimization, or RAG.
• Experience with multimodal models preferred.
• Familiarity with fine-tuning methods like SFT/LoRA/PEFT/RLHF/DPO is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Build and deploy ML models for search, recommendation, and discovery.
• Improve multimodal retrieval across text, image, video, and data.
• Develop and fine-tune LLMs and vision-language models for production use cases.
• Address relevance problems including query understanding, recall, ranking, embeddings, and RAG.
• Run experiments, analyze results, and drive KPI improvements.
• Process large-scale data and build scalable ML systems.

Skills

Machine learning

Deep learning

Multimodal learning

Retrieval

Embeddings

RAG

LLM fine-tuning

Python

Go

C++

Tools

N/A

Job description

About Wanderboat

Wanderboat is an AI-powered local discovery platform that helps people explore cities and find great places effortlessly. By combining conversational AI, interactive maps, and community-driven content, Wanderboat enables users to discover restaurants, attractions, and unique local experiences through simple, natural interactions.

We are building the next generation of AI-powered discovery, reimagining how people explore the world around them.

Our mission is to create immersive and personalized AI experiences that seamlessly integrate into users' real-world activities.

About the Role

We’re hiring ML engineers to build the core intelligence behind our search, recommendation, and multimodal retrieval systems.

This is a high-impact, hands-on role for engineers who want to apply machine learning, deep learning, and generative AI to real product problems at scale. You'll work on retrieval, ranking, relevance, content understanding, embeddings, and multimodal models, and help turn research ideas into production systems that improve user experience and business metrics.

Responsibilities

• Build and deploy ML models for search, recommendation, and discovery.
• Improve multimodal retrieval across text, image, video, and structured data.
• Develop and fine-tune LLMs and vision-language models for production use cases.
• Work on relevance problems including query understanding, recall, ranking, embeddings, and RAG.
• Run experiments, analyze results, and drive measurable improvements in KPIs.
• Process large-scale data and build practical, scalable ML systems.

Requirements

• Strong experience in machine learning applied to search, recommendation, ads, feed ranking, or relevance.
• Strong fundamentals in ML, deep learning, NLP, or multimodal learning.
• Hands-on experience with retrieval, ranking, embeddings, relevance, optimization, or RAG.
• Experience with multimodal models is strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with LLM fine-tuning methods such as SFT, LoRA, PEFT, RLHF, or DPO is a plus.
• Strong programming skills in Python, Go, or C++.
• Comfortable working in a fast-moving, high-ownership startup environment.

Learn more:

https://wanderboat.ai