Principal ML Engineer: MLOps, Research & Search

Aimlroles; Vista, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 175,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive health benefits (medical

Dental, vision, life and disability

Competitive salary + equity

401k Employer Match

9 Days of Observed Holidays

Flexible PTO

Subsidized ClassPass membership

Office in Playa Vista

Free Thrive Market membership

Life Coaching & Therapy coverage

Job summary

Thrive Market is seeking a Principal Machine Learning Engineer to bridge research and hands‑on MLOps, shaping search and discovery while translating model results into business impact. You’ll implement cutting‑edge ML papers, benchmark architectures, and guide production pipelines with cross‑functional teams.

Role spans from research to production with latitude to define how work is done, including a focus on LLM‑driven search. The office is in Playa Vista, CA, with travel to HQ as needed.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of machine learning engineering spanning both MLOps and research-oriented work, with demonstrated principal-level impact across the full loop from research paper to production implementation to business impact presentation
• Hands‑on experience reading and implementing ML papers, and running comparative training experiments to evaluate new model architectures against production baselines
• Experience building and operating ML infrastructure and pipelines, such as standing up a Redis cluster
• Experience with, or an informed perspective on, search and discovery systems, particularly how large language models have changed what's feasible to build in house versus buy
• Comfortable operating as a cross‑functional driver, not just an individual contributor, able to debate architecture and statistical methodology across teams
• Experience presenting technical results and roadmaps, including business and revenue impact, to broad or executive audiences

Responsibilities

• Build new ML systems from the ground up, close data gaps as they arise, and maintain and improve the existing ML pipeline
• Read and implement ML papers on alternative model architectures, then run training experiments to benchmark results against current production models
• Stand up and manage infrastructure, such as a Redis cluster, to support ML workloads
• Weigh in on and help drive architecture decisions and statistical methodology alongside the broader engineering team
• Help shape Thrive Market's long-term vision for search and discovery, informed by how large language models have changed what's possible to build
• Present model results and roadmap, including business and revenue impact

Skills

MLOps

Research-level thinking

Papers reading & implementation

Cross-functional driver

Model evaluation & experiments

Presentation to execs

Tools

Redis cluster

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Thrive Market is seeking a Principal Machine Learning Engineer to bridge research and hands‑on MLOps, shaping search and discovery while translating model results into business impact. You’ll implement cutting‑edge ML papers, benchmark architectures, and guide production pipelines with cross‑functional teams.

Role spans from research to production with latitude to define how work is done, including a focus on LLM‑driven search. The office is in Playa Vista, CA, with travel to HQ as needed.