Quizlet · 2 weeks ago
Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Personalization and Recommendations
San Francisco, CA
Full-time
Onsite
Senior Level
$162K/yr - $240K/yr
5+ years expQuizlet is a leading learning platform dedicated to helping learners achieve their goals through innovative technology. The Senior Machine Learning Engineer will design and optimize large-scale retrieval and recommendation systems, collaborating with cross-functional teams to enhance personalized learning experiences.
E-LearningEdTechEducationInternetKnowledge Management
Responsibilities
Design and implement personalization models across candidate retrieval, ranking, and post-ranking layers, leveraging user embeddings, contextual signals and content features
Develop scalable retrieval and serving systems using architectures such as Two-Tower models, deep ranking networks, and ANN-based vector search for real-time personalization
Build and maintain model training, evaluation, and deployment pipelines, ensuring reliability, training–serving consistency, observability, and robust monitoring
Partner with Product and Data Science to translate learner objectives (engagement, retention, mastery) into measurable modeling goals and experiment designs
Advance evaluation methodologies, contributing to offline metric design (e.g., NDCG, CTR, calibration) and supporting rigorous A/B testing to measure learner and business impact
Collaborate with platform and infrastructure teams to optimize distributed training, inference latency, and serving cost in production environments
Stay informed on industry and research trends, evaluating opportunities to meaningfully apply them within Quizlet’s ecosystem
Mentor junior and mid-level engineers, supporting technical growth, experimentation rigor, and responsible ML practices
Champion collaboration, inclusion, curiosity, and data-driven problem solving, contributing to a healthy and productive team culture
Qualification
Required
5+ years of experience in applied machine learning or ML-heavy software engineering, with a strong focus on personalization, ranking, or recommendation systems
Demonstrated impact improving key metrics such as CTR, retention, or engagement through recommender or search systems in production
Strong hands-on skills in Python and PyTorch, with expertise in data and feature engineering, distributed training and inference on GPUs, and familiarity with modern MLOps practices — including model registries, feature stores, monitoring, and drift detection
Deep understanding of retrieval and ranking architectures, such as Two-Tower models, deep cross networks, Transformers, or MMoE, and the ability to apply them to real-world problems
Experience with large-scale embedding models and vector search, including FAISS, ScaNN, or similar systems
Proficiency in experiment design and evaluation, connecting offline metrics (AUC, NDCG, calibration) with online A/B test outcomes to drive product decisions
Clear, effective communication, collaborating well with product managers, data scientists, engineers, and cross-functional partners
A growth and mentorship mindset, helping elevate team quality in modeling, experimentation, and reliability
Commitment to responsible and inclusive personalization, ensuring our systems respect learner privacy, fairness, and diverse goals
Preferred
Publications or open-source contributions in RecSys, search, or ranking
Familiarity with reinforcement learning for recommendations or contextual bandits
Experience with hybrid RecSys systems blending collaborative filtering, content understanding, and LLM-based reasoning
Prior work in consumer or EdTech applications with personalization at scale
Benefits
20 vacation days that we expect you to take!
Competitive health, dental, and vision insurance (100% employee and 75% dependent PPO, Dental, VSP Choice)
Employer-sponsored 401k plan with company match
Access to LinkedIn Learning and other resources to support professional growth
Paid Family Leave, FSA, HSA, Commuter benefits, and Wellness benefits
40 hours of annual paid time off to participate in volunteer programs of choice
Company
Quizlet
Quizlet is a learning platform that uses activities and games to help students practice and master what they’re learning.
201-500 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Quizlet has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (12)
2024 (10)
2023 (7)
2022 (9)
2021 (1)
2020 (8)
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageTotal Funding
$62MKey Investors
General AtlanticIcon Ventures
2020-05-13Series C· $30M
2018-02-06Series B· $20M
2015-11-23Series A· $12M
Leadership Team
Kurt Beidler
Chief Executive Officer
David Margulius
Board Member and Co-Founder
Recent News
2025-10-31
South Africa Today
2025-09-12
Mark Cuban Foundation
2025-09-09
Company data provided by crunchbase