Sr. Machine Learning Engineer

About Niche

Niche is the leader in school search. Our mission is to make researching and enrolling in schools easy, transparent, and free. With in-depth profiles on every school and college in America, 140 million reviews and ratings, and powerful search tools, we help millions of people find the right school for them. We also help thousands of schools recruit more best-fit students, by highlighting what makes them great and making it easier to visit and apply.

Niche is all about finding where you belong, and that mission inspires how we operate every day. We want Niche to be a place where people truly enjoy working and can thrive professionally.

About The Role

We are looking for a Senior ML Engineer to design, develop and deploy scalable machine learning solutions to power AI Assistants, Search and Recommendations, enhancing user and partner experiences at Niche. Your expertise in MLOps centered around AI Assistants, natural language processing and deep learning frameworks in search and recommendation systems will help drive innovation and growth.

What We Are Looking For

Key Responsibilities:

1. AI Assistant/Chatbot Development: Engineer ML pipelines to optimize conversational AI applications that leverage deep learning frameworks including transformer architectures
2. Resource Management: Optimize GPU/TPU and memory usage to optimize compute costs of ML pipelines while ensuring adherence to established SLAs
3. Search and Recommendations: Deep understanding of concepts like semantic search, query understanding, relevance and ranking, candidate generation.
4. MLOps: Oversee data preprocessing, feature engineering, ML observability and model registry to ensure quality of outputs from AIML applications.
5. Rapid prototyping: Ability to quickly iterate through ML System Designs and prototype ML solutions for continuous stakeholder feedback
6. System Integration: Collaborate with software engineers to integrate ML models into production systems, ensuring seamless user experiences.
7. Technical Leadership: Mentor junior engineers, partner with software engineers to provide technical guidance and foster a culture of innovation.

Qualifications:

      1. Education: Master's degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning or a relevant engineering discipline.
      2. Experience: 5+ years of experience in machine learning engineering, with 3+ years of demonstrable experience in working with AI Assistants.
      3. Technical Skills: Proficiency in Python, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Keras, scikit-learn and relevant libraries. Hands-on experience in MLOps/LLMOps, observability and CICD pipelines.
      4. Knowledge: Strong understanding of NLP, deep learning architectures, recommendation systems and evaluation metrics.
      5. Problem-Solving: Ability to tackle complex technical problems with strong analytical skills.
      6. Communication Skills: Excellent verbal and written communication abilities.

Preferred Qualifications:

      1. Experience with cloud computing platforms (e.g., AWS, Google Cloud, Azure).
      2. Familiarity with Llamaindex, LangChain, Ragas and agentic design patterns.
      3. Knowledge of search engine technologies e.g., Elasticsearch, OpenSearch and vector databases.
      4. Experience with RAG architectures and ML pipelines for reinforcement learning
      5. Familiarity with agile development methodologies.

Are you excited about the position and its responsibilities, but hesitant because your experience doesn't align 100% with the posted requirements? We believe you are more than a resume, so go for it! You won’t want to miss the opportunity to play a part in helping students find where they belong.

Compensation 

Our national target base salary range is $127,670-$159,589, plus participation in our Annual Bonus and Stock Option Program. Base compensation will be commensurate with experience and skills.

At Niche, our Total Rewards Philosophy is centered around creating a workplace environment that attracts, motivates, and retains top talent by providing a comprehensive and competitive rewards package.  This philosophy is built on the principles of performance-based compensation, best-in-class benefits and work-life balance, and employee well-being.

Interview Process

Candidate experience is a top priority for our talent and hiring teams.  We believe in providing a transparent, authentic and comprehensive interview process where you have the opportunity to learn about us while we get to know you and your experience.  The interview process is outlined here:

• Phone Screen with Talent Acquisition Partner - 30 Minutes

• Video Interview with Hiring Manager - 45 Minutes

• Team Interview - 45-60 Minutes 

• Leadership Interview - 60 Minutes 

Why Niche?

• We are a fully flexible workforce empowering our employees to choose to work remotely, in our Pittsburgh office or whatever combination suits you
• Full time, salaried position with competitive compensation in a fast-growing company
• Best-in-class 100% paid employee health plan, including vision and dental and supplemental coverage
• Flexible Paid Time Off Policy
• Stipend that allows you to build your work from home office in a style and function that suits your personal preferences
• Parental leave for all employees (12 weeks fully paid) in addition to short term disability for birthing parents
• Meaningful 401(k) with employer match
• Your ideas and work will make an immediate impact on our company and millions of users
• You will join a team that cares about you, our mission, our work - and celebrates our wins together!

Niche will only employ those who are legally authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship now or in the future for this opening.  

We are currently hiring in states where we currently have employees: AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MO, NE, NV, NH, NJ, NY, NC, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA, DC, WV.

Candidates only.  No recruiters or agencies, please. Sorry, we do not offer relocation assistance.

Niche is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive, innovative environment with the best employees. Therefore, we provide employment opportunities without regard to age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable law.

All interviews are being held remotely. If there are preparations we can make to help ensure you have a comfortable and positive interview experience, please let us know.