Principal Machine Learning Engineer/Applied Scientist at Grindr

This hybrid role, based in our Palo Alto or San Francisco offices, requires you to be in the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Why Join Us?

At Grindr, our mission is to connect users with the right match, in the right place, at the right time. We customize our dating platform for a diverse, global audience, enabling customers worldwide to find their best match. By leveraging a deep understanding of user preferences, we provide timely and relevant recommendations. We believe that our current customer experience is just the beginning of what's possible as dating continues its shift online, and that innovative experiences are driven by science, leading to significant improvements in customer experience (CX).

Role Overview

We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced Machine Learning Engineer to help us shape the future of machine learning at Grindr. In this role, you will tackle new challenges that will significantly impact how people discover and interact with the world around them, particularly within the LGBTQ+ community. You will collaborate with a world-class team of research scientists and engineers to develop new machine learning algorithms, systems, and applications that will drive meaningful changes in business metrics.

What You’ll Do

As a Principal ML Engineer, you will provide deep subject matter expertise in recommendation science. Working closely with teams of engineers and product managers, you will translate business and functional requirements into tangible deliverables. You will lead groundbreaking efforts in Generative AI to create new approaches to personalization, offering thought leadership to scientists and engineers for implementing scalable ML recommendations that support new customer experiences.

• Lead the development of cutting-edge algorithms in machine learning and collaborate with other engineering teams to implement innovations into Grindr's problems.
• Collect, analyze, and synthesize data findings to build intelligent, data-driven models.
• Independently solve moderately complex problems and write clean, efficient, and sustainable code.
• Be an expert in matching algorithms and recommender systems and oversee their implementation in Grindr.
• Use machine learning, natural language processing, and graph analysis to tackle modeling and ranking problems across various domains such as dating, personalization, growth, discovery, ads, and search.

What We’ll Love About You

• BS in Computer Science, Math, or related field.
• Mastery of at least one systems language (Python, Java, C++), one deep learning framework (Pytorch, Tensorflow, Keras), and one data analysis library (Pandas, R).
• Extensive experience in building, deploying, and maintaining end-to-end recommendation systems.
• Experience in developing complex, real-time systems involving AI, ML, NLP, and Recommender Systems, with successful delivery to customers.
• Strong Computer Science fundamentals in data structures, algorithm design, and complexity analysis.
• 5+ years of experience in engineering or R&D teams working on large-scale, production-level ML-driven projects, capable of taking a project from requirements gathering to product launch.
• Strong coding and software engineering skills and familiarity with software engineering principles around testing, code reviews, deployment, and expertise with Git version control.

We’ll Really Swoon If You Have

• MS or PhD degree in Computer Science or Machine Learning.
• Experience with recommender systems and matching algorithms within the dating industry.
• Expertise in large language models or a demonstrated ability to quickly develop this expertise.
• Exposure to architectural patterns of large-scale software applications.
• Experience in shipping products to millions of customers or in starting a new product line.
• Experience with Hadoop/HBase/Pig or MapReduce/Sawzall/Bigtable/Hive/Spark.
• A track record of peer-reviewed scientific publications advancing applied science.

What You’ll Love About Us

• Mission and Impact: Grindr is building a global gayborhood in your pocket, impacting millions of LGBTQ+ lives. We're committed to making the world more free, equal, and just.
• Family Insurance: Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance coverage for you, with partial coverage for your dependents.
• Retirement Savings: Gener