Machine learning engineer

About Shaped

Shaped is building the real-time context engine for AI. Vector databases retrieve documents - we retrieve decisions.

Shaped is backed by top-tier investors like Y Combinator and Madrona; with executives from Meta, Google, Amazon and Uber. We’re building an elite team to define the future of how users discover what matters most.

We're excited to work with you. Come build the future of AI with us!

About the Role

We are hiring Machine Learning Engineers to join our team. This is an opportunity to join us in-person as an early employee and make a large impact at a high-growth startup. You will design, build, experiment with, and optimize Shaped’s internal content understanding and ranking ML stack.

You’ll work on cutting-edge machine learning systems and research, applying them to high-impact recommendation, search, and decisioning problems at massive scale.

We're in the office 5 days a week. When unavoidable conflicts come up, we’re flexible. This is not a hybrid role.

What you will do

• Design and build machine learning models for recommendation, search, and content understanding.
• Develop and optimize ranking systems that serve real-time decisions across 1B+ users.
• Train, evaluate, and iterate on state-of-the-art models in NLP, computer vision, and adjacent AI fields.
• Build data pipelines and experimentation frameworks to support rapid model development and deployment.
• Work closely with Product and Engineering leadership to translate customer needs into ML solutions.
• Analyze model performance and conduct experiments to improve relevance, personalization, and quality.
• Write production-quality Python and SQL.
• Iterate rapidly to improve Shaped’s platform in response to customer needs.

Who You Are

• 5+ years of industry or research experience in machine learning, data science, or AI research.
• Previous experience working with recommendation or search systems in production.
• Experience in NLP, computer vision, or related AI fields.
• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL.
• Deep knowledge of mathematics, statistics, and algorithms.
• Comfortable owning projects end-to-end, from research and experimentation to production deployment.
• Track record of learning new concepts quickly

Bonus Points

• Experience training and serving large-scale ranking or retrieval models.
• Familiarity with distributed data processing systems such as Apache Spark or Apache Kafka
• Experience with feature stores, experiment platforms, or model monitoring infrastructure.
• Experience implementing data infrastructure that processes millions of documents per day.
• Background in reinforcement learning, representation learning, or foundation models.
• Experience with Rust

Benefits

⚕️Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance

🏦 Flexible Spending Account (FSA), Health Savings Account (HSA)

🦮 Expert Healthcare Guidance

💵 Retirement savings

🎄 Company holidays each year

🏖️ Unlimited days for personal time each year

🚌 Flex Commuter Benefits

🥤Office is fully-stocked with drinks and snacks to fuel your work day.

🍽️ Staying late? Dinner is on us