Senior ML Engineer, Nova: Context Retrieval & Search

Iterable, Inc.; New Boston (IL); Remote; USD 150,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Iterable is seeking a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to lead context retrieval and search for Nova, our intelligence layer. You’ll own the retrieval stack, build semantic query understanding, and ship production-grade pipelines that extract entities and embeddings from customer data.

You’ll work across structured and unstructured data, mentor engineers, and help set the technical direction for Nova, partnering with product and platform teams to improve grounding and reduce hallucinations.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of hands-on MLE experience deploying models at scale, with emphasis on search or IR.
• Master's or PhD in Computer Science, ML, AI, or a related field.

Responsibilities

• Build retrieval across structured and unstructured data, optimizing signals from each source.
• Build semantic query understanding, including rewriting, decomposition, and entity resolution for multi-turn workflows.
• Develop pipelines that extract entities, embeddings, and metadata from customer data and keep them fresh.
• Create search subagents that decide what to retrieve, run multi-hop searches, and flag retrieval failures.
• Measure quality with ranking metrics, LLM judges, and online tests to improve retrieval and the harness.
• Mentor engineers and help set the technical direction for Nova.

Skills

MLE in production

Information retrieval

Search & ranking

Multi-hop search

Evaluation & A/B testing

Grounding techniques

RAG & prompt tooling

LLM API experience

Education

Master's or PhD in CS/ML/AI

Tools

Elasticsearch/OpenSearch/Vespa

Job description

Iterable is seeking a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to lead context retrieval and search for Nova, our intelligence layer. You’ll own the retrieval stack, build semantic query understanding, and ship production-grade pipelines that extract entities and embeddings from customer data.

You’ll work across structured and unstructured data, mentor engineers, and help set the technical direction for Nova, partnering with product and platform teams to improve grounding and reduce hallucinations.