Senior AI/ML Engineer - Search & Recommendations

Upwork ($UPWK) is the world’s work marketplace. We serve everyone from one-person startups to large, Fortune 100 enterprises with a powerful, trust-driven platform that enables companies and talent to work together in new ways that unlock their potential.Last year, more than $3.8 billion of work was done through Upwork by skilled professionals who are gaining more control by finding work they are passionate about and innovating their careers.

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We're looking for an experienced Senior AI/ML Engineer to join our Al team in the Search & Recommendations domain. In this role, you will be building cutting-edge machine learning models that elevate our AI  strategies to drive significant business growth. As a senior ML Engineer, you will have the opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds in the industry and contribute to groundbreaking projects that shape the future of work. If you are passionate about pushing the boundaries of machine learning, thrive in a collaborative, results-oriented culture, and are excited about our mission, we invite you to join us.

Responsibilities:

• Analyze millions of structured and unstructured data to identify patterns and insights in user behavior and build meaningful features to improve model performance
• Design and implement efficient and reusable features, models and systems for different machine learning applications (classical & deep learned models) in low latency fashion
• Contribute to the performance and continued optimization of our recommendation systems: build machine learning models to improve understanding of user preferences, user intent and context to deliver accurate, relevant and personalized recommendations 
• collaborate with the business, analytics, and engineering counterparts to share the discovered data stories with stats, charts, and formal presentations, and finally propose recommendations to maximize the business impact.

What it takes to catch our eye:

• Strong Industry experience with large scale production grade machine learning systems an ML engineer with proficiency in one or more areas: Information Retrieval, Recommender Systems, Learning-to-Rank, Large Language Models, NLP & NLU, Deep Learning, Transfer Learning, Multi-task Learning, Graph Neural Network. A willingness to branch out and learn new domains and approaches. 
• Experienced with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch and TensorFlow, Large Language Models, Generative AI, Langchain, Transformer models 
• Experienced  with operationalizing, monitoring, and scaling machine learning models and pipelines in cloud ecosystems
• Excellent programming skills with one or more of the following languages Python, Spark, SQL, scala, java
• Hands-on experience with modern recommendation systems such as online and adaptive recommender systems is preferred.
• Strong publication track record in top AI/ML venues.

The annual base salary for this position in California and Washington ranges from $160,000 - $230,000 . The range displayed reflects the minimum and maximum salary for this position in California and Washington, and individual base pay will depend on your skills, qualifications, experience, and location. Additionally, this position is eligible for the annual bonus plan or sales incentive plan and eligibility to participate in our long term equity incentive program.

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Change the world around you.

At Upwork, you'll shape talent solutions for how the world works today. We are a remote-first organization working together to create exciting remote work opportunities for a global community of professionals. While we have physical offices in San Francisco and Chicago, we also hire full-time employees in 19 states in the United States.

Our vibrant culture is built on shared values and our mission to create economic opportunities so that people have better lives. We foster amazing teams, put our community first, and have a bias toward action. We encourage everyone to bring their whole selves to work and grow together through development opportunities, mentorship, and employee resource groups. And oh yeah, we've also got amazing benefits - including medical insurance for you and your family, unlimited PTO, 401(k) with matching, 12 weeks of paid parental leave, and a generous Employee Stock Purchase Plan. Check out our Life at Upwork page to learn more about our benefits and the employee experience.

Check out our Careers page to learn more about the employee experience.

Upwork is proudly committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse and inclusive workforce. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we never discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical condition), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

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