Machine Learning Engineer

Clay Labs

$150K — $180K *
Consumer Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5+ years in machine learning engineering or ML-heavy software engineering with production experience
  • Strong engineering fundamentals with a focus on production-quality code
  • Experience with LLMs and/or classical ML such as ranking and recommendations
  • Proficient in building data-intensive systems including pipelines and feature infrastructure
  • Pragmatic product sense optimizing user experience and business impact
  • Ability to navigate ambiguous environments while building foundational systems
  • Passion for AI, staying informed on innovations and tools

Responsibilities

  • Design and ship systems that leverage user behavior and business data for learning loops
  • Build recommendation-first experiences from prototype to production
  • Establish the infrastructure supporting learning, including data lakes and serving frameworks
  • Evaluate new tools to accelerate the product vision
  • Collaborate with data science and data platform teams to unify data standards
  • Develop evaluation systems to ensure learning features are effective and trustworthy
  • Partner with multiple product teams to enhance user interactions across all surfaces

Benefits

  • Opportunity to define a new architecture and standards in a greenfield environment
  • Collaborative work culture with a focus on impactful deliverables
  • Direct involvement in shaping the product vision aimed at customer understanding
  • Ownership and autonomy within a newly established Learning Team
  • Supportive environment focused on innovation in the AI space
Full Job Description
Machine Learning Engineer @ Clay

Clay's ambition is to build a self-learning revenue engine: a product that gets smarter every time someone uses it. This means data, ML, and AI are at the heart of everything we are building. We're looking for a Machine Learning Engineer to join the Learning Team: a centralized group of MLEs and data scientists whose charter is building the intelligence engine that powers learning loops across every surface of the product.

You'll ship intelligence features at the heart of the product: systems that learn a customer's business from their data and behavior, ranking and recommendation experiences, net new 0 to 1 AI products, and the ML platform that makes all of it possible.

What You'll Do

Build learning loops into the product

Design and ship systems that allow Clay to learn and improve using user behavior and important business data. Build net-new recommendation-first experiences, from prototype through production.

Build the ML and data platform

Help stand up the infrastructure that underpins learning including data lake foundations and serving infrastructure. Evaluate new tools for their ability to accelerate our product vision. Collaborate with our data science and data platform teams to ensure we're all using a common data language.

Make quality measurable

Build eval systems and online monitoring so learning features are trustworthy and ensure they are actually positively impacting users' experience of Clay.

Work across product teams

The Learning Team maintains one shared roadmap serving all product teams; you'll partner with almost every product team at Clay to make their surfaces smarter.

What You'll Bring

5+ years in machine learning engineering or ML-heavy software engineering, with models and ML-powered features shipped to production

Strong engineering fundamentals: you write production-quality code and own systems

Experience with LLMs in production (prompting, evals, guardrails, fine-tuning) and/or classical ML (ranking, recommendations, propensity models)

Experience building data-intensive systems: pipelines, feature infrastructure, retrieval, serving

Pragmatic product sense - you optimize for the end user experience and business impact, and know when simple beats sophisticated

Comfort with ambiguity - much of this platform is being built from the ground up

A passion for the AI space: you stay up-to-date on the latest innovations and tools, and are excited to be at the frontier

Nice To Haves

Experience building recommendation systems, search ranking, or personalization

Experience designing eval frameworks for LLM or ML systems

Familiarity with modern data stack tools (Snowflake, dbt, Dagster) and data lake architectures

Experience in fast-moving startup environments

Why Clay

This is a rare greenfield: the Learning Team is new, its charter comes straight from company leadership, and learning loops are central to Clay's product vision. You'll define the architecture, set the standards, collaborate on the product vision, and ship the features that make Clay feel like it truly knows every customer. We value ownership, clear thinking, and work that has real impact.

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