Staff Machine Learning Engineer

primer.ai

$150K — $180K *
US-AnywhereRemote in Pasadena, CA
Information Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • BS, MS, or PhD in computer science or a related field, or equivalent experience
  • 6+ years in building production backend software with ML functionality
  • Deep understanding of data structures and algorithms
  • Expertise in LLMs, agentic systems, and ML toolkit like PyTorch
  • Proficient in developing production APIs in Python, Rust is a bonus
  • Strong problem-solving skills with a bias to action in fast-paced environments
  • Ability to collaborate and mentor others effectively

Responsibilities

  • Set technical and product direction for LLM and NLP systems
  • Design and build agentic systems for large-scale product integration
  • Transform real-world data into actionable insights for agents
  • Deploy and manage machine learning models in production
  • Create evaluation metrics and data systems to improve model quality
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to refine technical roadmaps
  • Promote best engineering practices across the team

Benefits

  • Flexible vacation policy and Wellness Days
  • 100% paid parental leave
  • Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance
  • Fertility benefits and mental health support
  • Gympass+ and One Medical Membership for health and wellness
  • Remote work stipends and internet allowance
  • 401(k) retirement plan options
Full Job Description
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. What We Offer We are a series D funded company with investors from Addition, USIT, Lux Capital, Amplify Partners, Addition Capital, Bloomberg Beta, and others. We are intentional around building a diverse and inclusive team of subject matter experts to better advocate for the needs of our users. We care a lot about our work and about the well being of our team. We encourage everyone to work at a sustainable pace and have a flexible vacation policy for team members to utilize, Wellness Days and 100% paid leave for parents of growing families. We offer competitive compensation and comprehensive benefits. This includes full medical, dental, and vision coverage, fertility benefits through Carrot, mental health coverage on demand with Headspace Care+, Gympass+ Membership via Wellhub, One Medical Membership, 401(k), remote work stipends, and monthly internet allowance.

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