Senior Staff ML Engineer — AI-First Ads & Ranking

DoorDash, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 243,000 - 357,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity grants

401(k) plan with employer matching

Paid parental leave

Job summary

DoorDash, Inc. in San Francisco seeks a Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer to shape AI-first experiences across ads and promos. You will own the full ML lifecycle, from research to production, building ranking and relevance systems that operate at real-time scale.

You will apply state-of-the-art ML and LLM techniques, collaborate with product managers, data scientists, and designers, and drive impact on advertiser value and user experience while ensuring marketplace health.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience building, deploying, and scaling ML and AI models for large-scale, user-facing or data-intensive products.
• Proficiency with AI coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, Codex, Cursor) in the full software development lifecycle.
• Strong programming skills in Python, Java, or C++, with hands-on experience using ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or XGBoost.
• Deep expertise in deep learning, large language models, information retrieval, ranking and relevance, and NLP.
• Extensive experience across the full ML lifecycle, including data analysis, feature engineering, evaluation, and monitoring.

Responsibilities

• Own the full ML lifecycle from research to production, including data analysis, model development, evaluation, and online experiments.
• Rigorous offline and online evaluation design with clear metrics and tradeoffs.
• Partner with product managers, data scientists, and designers to deliver AI-driven improvements.
• Stay at the forefront of ML/AI and translate research into scalable, production-ready systems.

Skills

ML engineering

Large-scale ML

Ranking & relevance

NLP

Python

Java

C++

PyTorch

TensorFlow

XGBoost

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science or Engineering

Tools

Claude Code

Codex

Cursor

PyTorch

TensorFlow

XGBoost

Job description

DoorDash, Inc. in San Francisco seeks a Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer to shape AI-first experiences across ads and promos. You will own the full ML lifecycle, from research to production, building ranking and relevance systems that operate at real-time scale.

You will apply state-of-the-art ML and LLM techniques, collaborate with product managers, data scientists, and designers, and drive impact on advertiser value and user experience while ensuring marketplace health.