Headspace

Staff Machine Learning Engineer

Headspace$140K — $195K *
Consumer Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or related field OR equivalent experience
  • 5+ years of machine learning engineering experience, proficient in Python
  • 5+ years of experience with essential technologies: vector search, embedding models, recommender systems, various machine learning methods
  • 3+ years of experience using modern NLP tools and libraries like scikit-learn and TensorFlow
  • Experience in unit, integration, and end-to-end testing with version control
  • Strong problem-solving and communication skills, able to influence across teams
  • Mentorship experience and contribution to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) initiatives.

Responsibilities

  • Lead development of recommender systems for meditation and mindfulness content
  • Shape and evolve personalization architecture for AI systems
  • Collaborate with engineers and product leads to develop impactful features
  • Drive AI technology initiatives for enhancing mental healthcare delivery
  • Mentor junior engineers and foster technical career growth
  • Ensure production-ready AI capabilities through robust implementations.

Benefits

  • Comprehensive healthcare coverage
  • Monthly wellness stipend
  • Retirement savings match
  • Lifetime Headspace membership
  • Generous parental leave
  • Equity opportunities
  • Robust total rewards package.
Full Job Description
Staff Machine Learning Engineer

What you will do:
  • Technical Leadership: Lead the development of recommender systems for Headspace meditation & mindfulness content as well as other backend services that enable a personalized member experience including search, a user knowledge graph, and conversational AI memory. This will involve developing and deploying complex, scalable AI models and applications. Drive impactful ML technology initiatives that will shape the delivery of and access to mental healthcare. Serve as a go-to expert and mentor, exemplifying excellence in AI/ML engineering and inspiring others to pursue technical career growth.
  • Shape Personalization Architecture: Contribute to the design, development, and evolution of our AI systems, taking it from high-level vision to robust implementation, enabling production-ready AI capabilities.
  • Collaborative Problem-Solving: Partner with our team of software engineers,ML engineers, and MLOps engineers, and our Product & Clinical leads to build high quality features that improve members' lives.

What you will bring:

Required Skills:
  • Bachelor of Science degree or higher in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics or a related field OR equivalent experience
  • 5+ years of ML engineering experience in an academic or professional setting, programming in Python
  • 5+ years of experience with any of the following fundamental technologies: vector search, embedding models, recommender systems, supervised, unsupervised machine learning, deep learning, reinforcement learning, LLM orchestration, RAG systems.
  • 3+ years of experience with modern NLP tools and machine learning libraries (scikit-learn, PyTorch, TensorFlow, spaCy)
  • Experience with unit, integration, and end-to-end testing, version control
  • Strong problem solving and communication skills and ability to influence across internal organizations
  • Mentorship of junior engineers and contribution to DEIB initiatives

Preferred Skills:
  • Master's degree in relevant field or equivalent experience
  • Professional experience with clinical and/or healthcare applications of machine learning
  • Familiarity with current ML literature
  • Experience with implementation of robust and highly scalable services
  • Experience with AWS, including SageMaker, Lambda, S3, DynamoDB, IAM

Location: This role is open to candidates across the US, with preferred locations in San Francisco, CA (hybrid), New York City, NY (remote), and Seattle, WA (remote). Candidates must permanently reside in the US full-time.

If your primary residence is in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, this role follows our hybrid model, with 3 days per week in office to support in-person collaboration. Your recruiter will share more details.

Pay & Benefits:

The anticipated new hire base salary range for this full-time position is $140,400-$195,000 + equity + benefits.

For candidates based in San Francisco, New York City, or Seattle, a separate salary range of $179,400-$224,250 applies, consistent with our location-based compensation philosophy.

Our salary ranges are based on the job, level, and location, and reflect the lowest to highest geographic markets where we are hiring for this role within the United States. Within this range, individual compensation is determined by a candidate's location as well as a range of factors including but not limited to: unique relevant experience, job-related skills, and education or training.
Your recruiter will provide more details on the specific salary range for your location during the hiring process.

At Headspace, base salary is but one component of our Total Rewards package. We're proud of our robust package inclusive of: base salary, stock awards, comprehensive healthcare coverage, monthly wellness stipend, retirement savings match, lifetime Headspace membership, generous parental leave, and more. Additional details about our Total Rewards package will be provided during the recruitment process.

About Headspace

Headspace is a digital health platform that provides guided meditation sessions and mindfulness training. The company was founded in 2010 by Andy Puddicombe and Rich Pierson, and has since grown to become one of the most popular meditation apps in the world, with over 65 million users in more than 190 countries. Headspace offers a variety of meditation programs, including stress reduction, sleep improvement, and focus enhancement, and has partnerships with major companies such as Google, Nike, and Apple. The company is committed to making meditation accessible to everyone, and offers a free version of its app as well as a paid subscription service.
Learn more about Headspace
Size
500 employees
Industry
Founded
2010

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