Job DescriptionProtagonist is looking for a Senior Machine Learning Engineer who builds production-ready systems for mission-critical work. You bring strong engineering discipline, systems thinking, and a bias toward scalable, well-architected solutions-owning the full ML lifecycle from design to deployment.
You're a builder and strategic partner across engineering, product, and client-facing teams, expanding what AI can do at Protagonist. You stay curious and current with advances in ML, infrastructure, and software development.
Responsibilities- Partner with product, engineering, and data science teams to identify high-impact NLP use cases and turn business needs into ML solutions that deliver measurable value
- Own production NLP pipelines spanning narrative detection, NER, span classification, stance and characterization analysis, event extraction, deduplication, and knowledge-base entity linking over multi-language, noisy real-world text
- Design, build, and operate production NLP pipelines, narrative detection, event classification, entity resolution and linking, deduplication - over multi-language, noisy real-world text at scale
- Build and maintain ML workflows in Metaflow orchestrated on Argo Workflows and Kubernetes (EKS), including GPU-accelerated training and batch inference
- Develop LLM-powered features on AWS Bedrock: RAG pipelines with vector search on OpenSearch, tool-using agents, and document-analysis workflows - within GovCloud/ITAR constraints
- Fine-tune and deploy transformer models (classification, embeddings, entity linking) for domain-specific and foreign-language content
- Establish ML evaluation frameworks regression testing, hallucination detection, quality metrics and define success criteria with product managers
- Integrate ML services into our Django/PostgreSQL platform and event-driven infrastructure (Kafka, Redis, OpenSearch)
- Lead technical discussions to align cross-functional teams on ML strategy, architecture, and implementation
- Mentor others, share knowledge, and help evolve ML practices-balancing innovation with practical delivery
Requirements- U.S. person eligible to work on government contracts; active or prior SECRET clearance preferred
- Bachelor's and 5 years of experience, or master's degree and 3 years of experience, in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related technical field
- Proven track record building and deploying production ML systems, with deep NLP expertise (transformers, LLMs, embedding models)
- Strong Python skills and fluency with PyTorch and the Hugging Face ecosystem
- Hands-on experience with AWS (GovCloud experience a strong plus), Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines
- Experience with ML orchestration and experiment tracking (e.g., Metaflow, Argo Workflows, MLflow, or similar)
- Experience with vector search and document indexing (OpenSearch/Elasticsearch or similar)
- Experience building LLM applications, RAG, agents, prompt engineering, and evaluation
- Skilled at scaling ML for multi-modal (text, image, video) and domain-specific applications, and working effectively across engineering, product, and business teams
Ideal Candidates- Experience integrating ML into full-stack products (Django/REST APIs, React frontends) or decision-support tools
- Experience operating in compliance-constrained environments
- Strong communicator and cross-functional collaborator
- Self-starter who thrives in ambiguity and startup-like environments
Join UsIf you're passionate about technology and making an impact, apply today! Protagonist is dedicated to fostering a welcoming and innovative environment where everyone's voice can make a difference.
Salary Range: $95,000-$141,000 based on education and level of relevant experience.
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
