Pay: USD 195,000–230,000/year · Base — pay source
Annual Base Pay Range $195,000—$230,000 USD CPRA Privacy Notice for California Candidates
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Employment: Unconfirmed

What you’ll work on

We are looking for a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to help evolve our large-scale recommendation systems and apply AI / LLM technologies to real-world production problems.

Design, build, and iterate on high-throughput, low-latency recommendation systems powering NewsBreak’s core feeds.

Tools in this posting

Java
Python
Scala
PyTorch
TensorFlow

Source

What We’re Looking For Minimum Qualifications - 3+ years of industry experience building machine learning or recommendation systems in production. - Strong understanding of recommendation system fundamentals (ranking, embeddings, user/item modeling, experimentation). - Strong coding skills with Python / Java / Scala, and experience with PyTorch or TensorFlow. - Experience working with large-scale data and ML systems (e.g., Spark, distributed training, real-time inference). - Ability to own features end-to-end and deliver measurable business impact. Bonus / Plus Qualifications - Production experience applying AI or LLMs to recommendation systems. - Experience contributing to 0 → 1 AI or ML-driven products. - Familiarity with AI-assisted development tools and workflows.

Benefits in the posting

Full benefits wording

We offer a competitive benefits package:
Health, dental, and vision care for you and your family (100% coverage for employee)
Top-tier 401(K) plan with company matching
Paid time off and paid holidays
FSA, HSA and commuter benefits programs
Team activity budget
The US base salary range for this full-time position is listed below. Pay may vary based on a number of factors including job-related skills, level, experience, geographic location and relevant education or training. At NewsBreak, we design our overall rewards package to attract top talents. Depending on the position, the role may also be eligible for discretionary bonus and options. Your recruiter can share more details during the hiring process.
Annual Base Pay Range
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From the employer’s posting.

About NewsBreak

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.

In the employer’s words · Read in context

Job description

View original posting ↗

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.

If you’re inspired to dream big, innovate fast, and make a difference, we’d love to hear from you! For more information, visit www.newsbreak.com/about

About the Role

We are looking for a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to help evolve our large-scale recommendation systems and apply AI / LLM technologies to real-world production problems. You will work on core feed, retrieval, and ranking systems serving tens of millions of users, while also participating in AI-driven innovation projects that explore new ways to improve content discovery, personalization, and developer productivity. This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy strong individual ownership, hands-on development, and translating ideas into reliable systems.

What You’ll Work On

Large-Scale Recommendation Systems

Design, build, and iterate on high-throughput, low-latency recommendation systems powering NewsBreak’s core feeds.
Improve retrieval, ranking, and multi-objective optimization to balance engagement, retention, content quality, and business metrics.
Own systems from offline training → online inference → A/B experimentation → metric analysis.
Identify and resolve issues related to data quality, model drift, and system performance in production.

AI & LLM Applications

Apply LLMs and foundation models to recommendation-related problems such as content understanding, user intent modeling, and feature generation.
Prototype quickly, validate with experiments, and push successful ideas into production.

AI-Driven Development

Embrace AI-assisted development workflows, including LLM-powered coding, debugging, and analysis.
Apply AI across feature ideation, prototyping, and experiment analysis.

0 → 1 Innovation

Contribute to 0–1 AI-powered projects, helping take ideas from early exploration to MVP and production.

What We’re Looking For

Minimum Qualifications - 3+ years of industry experience building machine learning or recommendation systems in production. - Strong understanding of recommendation system fundamentals (ranking, embeddings, user/item modeling, experimentation). - Strong coding skills with Python / Java / Scala, and experience with PyTorch or TensorFlow. - Experience working with large-scale data and ML systems (e.g., Spark, distributed training, real-time inference). - Ability to own features end-to-end and deliver measurable business impact.

Bonus / Plus Qualifications - Production experience applying AI or LLMs to recommendation systems. - Experience contributing to 0 → 1 AI or ML-driven products. - Familiarity with AI-assisted development tools and workflows.

Benefits

We offer a competitive benefits package:

Health, dental, and vision care for you and your family (100% coverage for employee)
Top-tier 401(K) plan with company matching
Paid time off and paid holidays
FSA, HSA and commuter benefits programs
Team activity budget

The US base salary range for this full-time position is listed below. Pay may vary based on a number of factors including job-related skills, level, experience, geographic location and relevant education or training. At NewsBreak, we design our overall rewards package to attract top talents. Depending on the position, the role may also be eligible for discretionary bonus and options. Your recruiter can share more details during the hiring process.

Annual Base Pay Range

$195,000—$230,000 USD

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