Staff ML Engineer: Large-Scale Matching & Personalization

ZipRecruiter, Inc.; Santa Monica, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 205,000 - 265,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Exceptional benefits package

Flexible Vacation & Paid Time Off

Employer-matched 401(k) plan

Job summary

ZipRecruiter, Inc. is seeking a Staff Machine Learning Engineer / Data Scientist to lead core ML initiatives in a high-visibility role. You will shape the ML roadmap, design scalable systems, and translate research into production models.

This role is hybrid with remote options for US-based employees. You will mentor ML engineers, collaborate with engineering and product teams, and drive end-to-end model development from experimentation to deployment.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional experience developing and deploying machine learning models in large-scale production environments.
• Architecting and shipping end-to-end ML solutions that serve production traffic at scale.
• Deep domain expertise in Recommendation Systems, Personalization, Ranking & Retrieval, or Interaction Prediction.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals with hands-on expertise using modern deep learning frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow).
• Proven experience in technical leadership and mentorship, driving technical alignment across cross-functional engineering and product teams.
• Strong background in statistical modeling, online experimentation (A/B testing methodology), and offline metric design.

Responsibilities

• Drive ML Strategy & Roadmap: Partner directly with Engineering and Product Leadership to define and execute the technical vision for core components in the marketplace, including but not limited to recommendation engines and matching algorithms, ML entity representation platform.
• Architect High-Scale Systems: Design and own state-of-the-art ML systems handling dynamic interaction prediction, candidate ranking, and candidate/job retrieval across high-throughput production environments.
• Optimize Two-Sided Marketplace Dynamics: Solve high-complexity matching and recommendation challenges native to two-sided marketplaces, including real-time intent prediction, bilateral relevancy, candidate cold-start problems, and feedback loops between job seekers and employers.
• Org-Wide Technical Leadership: Mentor and guide Machine Learning Engineers and Data Scientists across teams to instill a culture of technical excellence, rigorous experimentation, and fast production delivery.
• Production Excellence: Drive end-to-end model ownership—from initial exploration and feature engineering through distributed training, offline/online evaluation (A/B testing), to real-time latency optimization.

Skills

Leadership

AB testing

Statistical modeling

Recommendation systems

Retrieval & ranking

Education

MS/PhD in CS or ML

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Job description

ZipRecruiter, Inc. is seeking a Staff Machine Learning Engineer / Data Scientist to lead core ML initiatives in a high-visibility role. You will shape the ML roadmap, design scalable systems, and translate research into production models.

This role is hybrid with remote options for US-based employees. You will mentor ML engineers, collaborate with engineering and product teams, and drive end-to-end model development from experimentation to deployment.