Senior ML Engineer - Recommender & Retrieval Lead

Grubhub; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 240,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

401(k)

Medical plan

Dental plan

Vision plan

Disability insurance

Paid time off

Parental leave

Meal discounts

Job summary

Grubhub is seeking a Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer to lead the ML engine behind Discovery: ranking, recommendation, and retrieval systems that determine what diners see in the app. This hands-on leadership role owns model architecture across search ranking, homepage recommendations, retrieval, and query understanding.

You will set technical direction with other staff engineers and partners, mentor engineers, and raise the bar on how models are built, evaluated, and operated.

Qualifications

• MS/PhD in a quantitative discipline or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years building and shipping ML systems, with 3+ years at staff-level scope.
• Deep experience in recommendation/ranking/information retrieval at scale.
• Production deep learning in TensorFlow or PyTorch, including training, serving, and tuning on GPUs.
• Experience with Large Language Models and transformer architectures.
• Strong data engineering fundamentals: PySpark, Hive/SQL, Python data stack.
• Fluency with experimentation: designing A/B tests and guardrails.
• Experience with cloud ML infrastructure and model deployment/monitoring.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture of our ranking and recommendation stack end to end.
• Lead the offline evaluation and online experimentation work to trust results.
• Bring state-of-the-art research in information retrieval and recommender systems into runtime.
• Raise engineering and operational standards across multiple teams.
• Partner with Product, Search Eng, Ads, and Data Platform to shape roadmaps.
• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers and contribute to hiring.
• Translate technical trade-offs into business terms for stakeholders.
• Question existing assumptions and drive innovation across the org.

Skills

Machine learning systems

Staff-level leadership

Recommendation systems

TensorFlow / PyTorch

Large Language Models

Data engineering (PySpark, Hive/SQL)

Experimentation / A/B testing

Cloud ML infrastructure

Communication to stakeholders

Mentoring engineers

Education

MS/PhD in quantitative field

Tools

AWS SageMaker

Job description

Grubhub is seeking a Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer to lead the ML engine behind Discovery: ranking, recommendation, and retrieval systems that determine what diners see in the app. This hands-on leadership role owns model architecture across search ranking, homepage recommendations, retrieval, and query understanding.

You will set technical direction with other staff engineers and partners, mentor engineers, and raise the bar on how models are built, evaluated, and operated.