Staff Engineer, Machine Learning
About Medium
Medium is one of the world's most influential writing platforms, connecting millions of readers with ideas that matter. We're a small, dedicated team that cares deeply about craft, curiosity, and building something that lasts. We make decisions efficiently and iterate fast, think carefully, and take the work seriously - without taking ourselves too seriously.
About the Role
Responsible for the engineering success and impact of the Medium Recommendations application. Act as the subject matter expert for machine-learning backend, including: Technical design and architecture for the feature store and rex backend service; Create, maintain, and update backend logic for core recommender system features; Proactive recommendations stack for privacy, security, and cost issues, in order to optimize for performance and cost; and Act as technical expert for ML Ops within the company. Lead major technical and product feature development projects related to machine learning. Propose, plan, and execute on large-scale improvements of our tech stack and product. Break down complex projects into simple systems that can be planned and built by other engineers. Set technical direction for teammates. Represent large ideas and get buy in from cross-functional peers on them. Ensure tight collaboration between teams on technical plans across many projects. Ensure knowledge is shared across teams to appropriate people, at the right level, and right medium. Mentor multiple engineers and take steps to support the growth and success of teammates. Raise the quality of those around them. Work with manager to provide and implement ideas on how to improve the team. Participate in the once-monthly, weeklong on-call rotation. Full-Time Telecommuting permitted. [REF. #562126]
Who are you? (Skills, Knowledge & Expertise)
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Bachelor’s or foreign equivalent degree in Computer Science, Math, Machine Learning, Applied Mathematics or in a closely related field and 5 years of experience in the job offered or in a software engineering-related occupation. Alternatively, employer will accept a Master’s or foreign equivalent degree in Computer Science, Math, Machine Learning, Applied Mathematics or in a closely related field and 4 years of experience in the job offered or in a software engineering-related occupation. Any suitable combination of education, training and/or experience is acceptable.
Nice to Haves
Position requires experience in each of the following skills:
1. 4 years of experience in Python;
- 4 years of experience in Golang Engineering;
- 4 years of experience in Machine Learning Backend Engineering including Machine Learning platform design (architecture concepts and best practices), ETL/ELT pipelines, Fluency in Python, Golang, and JavaScript, ML libraries such as TensorFlow, HuggingFace Transformers, and scikit-learn, end-to-end deployment of ML models, including containers/docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, and AWS systems, and third-party tools including DataDog, Grafana, Looker, Mode, Snowflake, ScyllaDB;
- 3 years of experience in Expertise in recommendation systems (Medium Recommendations System (Recs), Two-Tower Architecture, Retrieval systems, and Medium-specific Business Logic);
- 2 years of experience in Machine Learning Algorithms including Neural embedding architectures for user and item representation learning in shared latent spaces, Approximate nearest neighbor algorithms for efficient candidate retrieval at scale, Gradient boosted decision trees and deep learning ranking models for multi-stage scoring, Contrastive learning and negative sampling strategies for training two-tower architectures, Multi-objective optimization algorithms for balancing engagement, diversity, and business metrics, and Statistical methods for online experimentation and causal measurement of recommendation quality;
- Specialization in machine learning, backend software engineering, devops / infrastructure work (keeping high-performance, high-uptime systems running), high-performance engineering, collaboration with applied scientists / mathematicians.
Benefits
In addition to the new skills you'll pick up, here's what else you'll enjoy by working at Medium:
- Working with a fully distributed team: We’re fully remote and have teammates across the U.S. & France
- Healthcare benefits covered at 100% for employees and 80% for dependents
- Generous parental leave policy
- Mental health support through Spring Health (or find a provider through Rula or Kaiser Mental Health Network)
- Financial wellness support through Northstar
- Stipends for co-working, professional development, wifi, and a one-time home office bonus
- Unlimited PTO and standard company holidays
- A discounted Medium membership
Why Medium
At Medium, inclusion, diversity, and equity are core to how we work and what we build. We believe a more inclusive team creates a better product—one that’s intuitive, thoughtful, and serves a wide range of users. We strive to foster a supportive, fun, and challenging environment where people from all backgrounds can thrive.
We welcome applicants from all walks of life and strongly encourage those from historically underrepresented groups to apply. Our hiring process is built to ensure fairness and equal opportunity for everyone. Even if your experience doesn’t match every requirement, we’d still love to hear from you—your perspective and passion matter more than checking every box. We actively track representation across our hiring pipelines and hold ourselves accountable to building inclusively.
Learn more about our mission, operating principles, and culture:
Read about our story here.
Read our guidance on AI use for candidates. We believe human ideas have the power to change how people think, for the better. That belief shapes how we hire. We use AI tools ourselves, but we’ve thought carefully about where it adds value and where it gets in the way of something important.
Salary Range
$250,000 - $250,000 USD
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