Staff Machine Learning Engineer

primerai; Pasadena (CA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Primer is building trusted, decision-ready AI for leaders, operators, and analysts. We seek a Staff Machine Learning Engineer who will own AI-driven products end-to-end—from prototype to production—across large language models, agentic systems, retrieval, embeddings, and fine-tuned models.

You’ll ship reliable systems at scale and drive real-world impact. You will partner with product and engineering leaders to define the technical roadmap, raise the engineering bar, and ensure the AI delivers

Qualifications

• BS, MS, or PhD in computer science or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 6+ years building production backend software with ML components.
• Strong knowledge of data structures, algorithms, and scalable systems.
• Hands-on depth with LLMs and agentic systems (prompt and context engineering, tool use, retrieval and RAG) and ML toolkit such as PyTorch.
• Fluency authoring production APIs in Python (Rust a plus).
• High agency and bias to action in ambiguous, fast-moving problems, with collaborative mindset.

Responsibilities

• Set technical and product direction across LLM, agentic, and NLP systems while shaping AI-driven experiences.
• Design and build distributed, tool-using conversational agents with multi-turn context and retrieval-grounded reasoning.
• Turn real-world data into trustworthy signals through entity recognition, relation extraction, summarization and knowledge-graph generation.
• Take models from checkpoint to production with low-latency, high-concurrency inference at scale.
• Create evals and labeled-data flywheels to prove and improve quality.
• Collaborate with product and engineering leaders to shape the technical roadmap and drive root-cause analysis when issues arise.
• Raise engineering standards with reusable patterns and best practices.

Skills

LLMs

Agentic systems

Retrieval

Embeddings

Fine-tuned models

Evaluation harnesses

Python APIs

PyTorch

Distributed systems

Decision-ready AI

Education

BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science

Job description

Primer exists to make the world a safer place. We do this by providing trusted decision-ready AI to the world's most critical organizations. Our software enables leaders, operators, and analysts to better understand the changing world around us in real time and make informed decisions when the stakes are high. Primer has offices in San Francisco, Pasadena, CA and Arlington, VA. For more information, please visit https://primer.ai/

Primer exists to make the world a safer place. We build trusted, decision-ready AI for the organizations that can least afford to be wrong: the leaders, operators, and analysts making high-stakes calls about a world that changes faster than anyone can read it. We have offices in San Francisco, Pasadena, CA, and Arlington, VA. Learn more at primer.ai .

The world produces more information every day than any team can read. We build the AI that turns it into a decision you can trust: fast and grounded enough to stake real consequences on.

As a Staff Machine Learning Engineer, you'll own AI-driven products end to end, from the prototype that proves an idea works to the production system the mission depends on. You work fluently across the modern stack: large language models, agentic systems, retrieval, embeddings, fine-tuned models, and the evaluation harnesses that catch them when they drift. You can move fast on an open-ended problem and then harden the result into something reliable at scale, drawing on real distributed‑systems experience. You're energized by what frontier models and agents make newly possible. You reach for them reflexively, including to multiply your own output, and you raise the level of everyone around you as you go.

Your technical range matters as much as your judgment about how the pieces fit together. The best work here is designed as part of the whole system, not bolted on beside it, and the engineers with the most impact bring product managers and teammates along with them rather than around them. You'll partner with product, engineering, and other technical leaders on the hardest version of the problem: putting real AI in the hands of people the moment a decision can't wait.

Role and Responsibilities - How You Will Make an Impact

• Set both technical and product direction, making the strategic bets across our LLM, agentic, and NLP systems while shaping how we design AI-driven experiences and set expectations with users.
• Design and build the distributed, agentic systems behind our products at company-wide scale: tool-using conversational agents, multi-turn context, retrieval-grounded reasoning, and the orchestration that ties them together.
• Turn massive, messy, real-world data into the trustworthy signal agents' reason over: entity recognition and linking, relation extraction, summarization, semantic search, and knowledge-graph generation.
• Take models from checkpoint to production: package, deploy, and operate low-latency, high-concurrency inference (Triton, vLLM, GPU-backed serving) that stays fast and reliable under real load.
• Build the evals and labeled-data flywheels that steer the work rather than gate it, turning "it feels better" into proof you can act on.
• Partner with and influence cross-functional teams to shape the technical roadmap, and drive issues to root cause when quality or operations are on the line.
• Raise the engineering bar with better patterns, better practices, and a standard other engineers want to match.

Relevant Skills and Experience

• BS, MS, or PhD in computer science, a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 6+ years building production backend software, with a track record of shipping and operating ML-driven functionality.
• Mastery of data structures and algorithms, and the judgment to translate user needs into practical solutions.
• Hands‑on depth with LLMs and agentic systems (prompt and context engineering, tool use, retrieval and RAG) and the broader ML toolkit such as PyTorch, plus experience defining evals to measure and improve quality.
• Fluency authoring production APIs in Python (Rust a plus).
• High agency and a bias to action in ambiguous, fast-moving problems, plus the curiosity, generosity, and love of teaching that lifts a whole team.

Bonus Points

• Experience with knowledge graphs, information retrieval at scale, or LLM fine‑tuning and post‑training.
• A pull toward high‑stakes, real‑world problems where the work actually ships and someone depends on the answer.

Primer works closely with the U.S. defense and intelligence establishment. Any offer of employment is conditioned on an applicant or employee being able to meet any applicable government contract requirements. The company may rescind any offer of employment to an applicant or terminate an employee if the applicant or employee is unable to perform the functions of the position in compliance with applicable government contracts or if an applicant or employee makes a false attestation of compliance.

What We Offer

We are a series D funded