Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Systems

EvenUp EvenUp · Vertical AI · San Francisco, CA · Hybrid · Data Science

Staff Machine Learning Engineer to lead the design and architecture of high-impact generative AI products, focusing on RAG, vector search, and fine-tuning frameworks for a proprietary claims-intelligence platform. The role involves defining technical strategy, providing hands-on leadership, collaborating cross-functionally, driving innovation in semantic search and evaluation, and mentoring an ML team.

What you'd actually do

  1. Lead the design and architecture of large-scale ML systems for RAG, vector search, and fine-tuning frameworks across multiple product lines.
  2. Define and drive technical strategy and best practices for ML system design, including embedding pipelines and evaluation frameworks.
  3. Provide hands-on technical leadership by reviewing designs, code, and system proposals to elevate the technical bar across the ML engineering org.
  4. Collaborate cross-functionally with Product and Engineering to translate ambiguous business goals into robust, impactful ML architectures.
  5. Drive innovation and prototyping in semantic search and generative AI evaluation, ensuring new techniques like LoRA are effectively integrated into production.

Skills

Required

  • Python
  • PyTorch
  • TensorFlow
  • Hugging Face
  • transformer models
  • embeddings
  • fine-tuning methods (e.g., LoRA, PEFT)
  • vector databases (e.g., Pinecone, Milvus, or FAISS)
  • ML system design
  • embedding pipelines
  • evaluation frameworks
  • semantic search
  • generative AI evaluation
  • cross-functional collaboration
  • technical strategy development
  • roadmap development
  • execution in fast-paced, ambiguous environments
  • high-growth startup environment experience
  • cross-functional leadership

Nice to have

  • PhD in Machine Learning, Computer Science, or other quantitative fields
  • LangChain
  • LlamaIndex
  • custom retrieval pipelines
  • hybrid work setting

What the JD emphasized

  • Lead the design and architecture
  • Define and drive technical strategy
  • Provide hands-on technical leadership
  • Drive innovation and prototyping
  • Own the frameworks and abstractions
  • Establish standards for system evaluation
  • Influence the long-term roadmap
  • Mentor and guide other engineers
  • A true builder’s mentality
  • Deep domain expertise
  • Strong record of mentorship
  • Experience and comfort
  • Excellent communication skills
  • 5+ years of hands-on professional experience
  • Deep hands-on expertise
  • Strong proficiency in Python
  • Demonstrated ability to lead technical strategy
  • Experience working in a high-growth startup environment.
  • Excellent cross-functional leadership skills

Other signals

  • Generative AI products
  • Piai™ proprietary claims-intelligence platform
  • Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
  • vector search
  • fine-tuning frameworks
  • semantic search
  • generative AI evaluation
  • LoRA integration
  • ML workflows reproducible, scalable, and reusable
  • system evaluation
  • relevance, latency, cost efficiency, and reliability metrics
  • ML tooling, infrastructure, and developer experience