Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Recommendation & AI Platform

About NewsBreak

Founded in 2015, NewsBreak is the Content Intelligence platform shaping the future content economy. With over 40 million monthly active users, our flagship platform delivers highly personalized local news and information powered by advanced AI, recommendation systems, and adtech. Recognized by Fast Company as #32 on the Top Workplaces for Innovators, we're proud to be Great Place to Work® certified and home to a dynamic team of technologists, product innovators, and business leaders who are passionate about solving meaningful challenges at scale. Together, we reached unicorn status in 2021, and we remain committed to continuing this high-growth trajectory with the right team to fulfill our mission: building the infrastructure layer for content intelligence. If you’re inspired to dream big, innovate fast, and make a difference, we’d love to hear from you!

About the Role

We are seeking a Staff Machine Learning Engineer to provide technical leadership for our recommendation systems and AI initiatives. In this role, you will define technical direction for large-scale personalization systems, lead complex projects across teams, and drive the adoption of AI / LLM technologies in both product capabilities and engineering workflows. This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy system-level thinking, mentoring others, and turning ambiguous problems into scalable solutions.

What You’ll Work On

• Technical Leadership & Architecture

  • Lead the design of next-generation recommendation system architectures at scale.
  • Drive best practices for model lifecycle management, experimentation, and system reliability.
  • Partner with product, infra, and data teams to align technical strategy with business goals.

• Advanced Recommendation & AI Systems

  • Own complex initiatives across retrieval, ranking, re-ranking, and multi-objective optimization.
  • Lead the application of LLMs and foundation models in recommendation, content intelligence, and user modeling.
  • Evaluate emerging AI technologies and guide their adoption into production systems.

• AI-Native Engineering

  • Champion AI-native development practices, including LLM-assisted coding, experimentation, and analysis.
  • Help establish standards and shared tooling for AI-driven engineering.

• 0 → 1 Innovation & Scaling

  • Lead 0–1 AI initiatives, from ideation and technical validation to production rollout and scaling.
  • Ensure successful prototypes evolve into maintainable, scalable platforms.

What We’re Looking For

Minimum Qualifications

• 8+ years of industry experience building large-scale ML or recommendation systems.
• Deep expertise in recommendation systems and applied machine learning in production environments.
• Strong system design skills and the ability to influence architecture across teams.
• Proven track record of technical leadership and cross-team collaboration.

Bonus / Plus Qualifications

• Demonstrated success applying LLMs or foundation models to recommendation or content systems in production.
• Experience leading 0 → 1 AI platform or product initiatives.
• Passion for improving engineering velocity through AI-assisted development workflows.