Principal Machine Learning Engineer

A1; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 347,000 - 490,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading AI company in Palo Alto seeks a skilled individual to turn research into production-grade ML systems. The ideal candidate will build and maintain ML pipelines, fine-tune models, and collaborate with engineers to integrate these systems. This role requires a strong background in deep learning, hands-on experience with ML frameworks like PyTorch, and a bias toward rapid iteration. Compensation ranges from $347K to $490K, with an emphasis on technical expertise and team collaboration.

Qualifications

• Strong background in deep learning and transformer-based architectures.
• Hands-on experience training, fine-tuning, or deploying large-scale ML models in production.
• Proficiency with at least one modern ML framework, with a capacity to learn others quickly.

Responsibilities

• Build and own end-to-end ML pipelines from data to deployment.
• Architect and operate scalable inference systems balancing latency, cost, and reliability.
• Collaborate with engineering to integrate ML systems in products.

Skills

Deep learning fundamentals

Transformers-based architectures

Large-scale ML production

GPU optimization techniques

Iterative system improvements

Tools

PyTorch

JAX

DeepSpeed

Ray

Job description

A1 is building a proactive AI system that understands context across conversations, plans actions, and carries work forward over time.

You will be responsible for turning research direction into working, production-grade ML systems. This role owns the execution layer of A1’s intelligence – training pipelines, inference systems, evaluation tooling, and deployment.

Focus

• Build and own end-to-end ML pipelines spanning data, training, evaluation, inference, and deployment.
• Fine-tune and adapt models using state-of-the‑art methods such as LoRA, QLoRA, SFT, DPO, and distillation.
• Architect and operate scalable inference systems, balancing latency, cost, and reliability.
• Design and maintain data systems for high‑quality synthetic and real‑world training data.
• Implement evaluation pipelines covering performance, robustness, safety, and bias, in partnership with research leadership.
• Own production deployment, including GPU optimization, memory efficiency, latency reduction, and scaling policies.
• Collaborate closely with application engineering to integrate ML systems cleanly into backend, mobile, and desktop products.
• Make pragmatic trade‑offs and ship improvements quickly, learning from real usage.
• Work under real production constraints: latency, cost, reliability, and safety

Requirements

• Strong background in deep learning and transformer‑based architectures.
• Hands‑on experience training, fine‑tuning, or deploying large‑scale ML models in production.
• Proficiency with at least one modern ML framework (e.g. PyTorch, JAX), and ability to learn others quickly.
• Experience with distributed training and inference frameworks (e.g. DeepSpeed, FSDP, Megatron, ZeRO, Ray).
• Strong software engineering fundamentals – you write robust, maintainable, production‑grade systems.
• Experience with GPU optimization, including memory efficiency, quantization, and mixed precision.
• A bias toward shipping, learning fast, and improving systems through iteration.

Ideal Experience

• Experience with LLM inference frameworks such as vLLM, TensorRT‑LLM, or FasterTransformer.
• Contributions to open‑source ML or systems libraries.
• Background in scientific computing, compilers, or GPU kernels.
• Experience with RLHF pipelines (PPO, DPO, ORPO).
• Experience training or deploying multimodal or diffusion models.
• Experience with large‑scale data processing (Apache Arrow, Spark, Ray).

Compensation Range

$347K – $490K

How We Work

Our organization is very flat and our team is small, highly motivated, and focused on engineering and product excellence. All members are expected to be hands‑on and to contribute directly to the company’s mission.

If there appears to be a fit, we'll reach to schedule 3, but no more than 4 interviews.

Applications are evaluated by our technical team members. Interviews will be conducted via virtual meetings and/or onsite.

We value transparency and efficiency, so expect a prompt decision. If you've demonstrated the exceptional skills and mindset we're looking for, we'll extend an offer to join us. This isn't just a job offer; it's an invitation to be part of a team that's bringing AI to have practical benefits to billions globally.