Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Safety

Patreon is a media and community platform where over 300,000 creators give their biggest fans access to exclusive work and experiences. We offer creators a variety of ways to engage with their fans and build a lasting business including: paid memberships, free memberships, community chats, live video, and selling to fans directly with one-time purchases.

Ultimately our goal is simple: fund the creative class. And we're leaders in that space, with:

• $10 billion+ generated by creators since Patreon's inception

• 100 million+ free memberships for fans who may not be ready to pay just yet, and

• 25 million+ paid memberships on Patreon today.

We're continuing to invest heavily in building the best creator platform with the best team in the creator economy and are looking for a Machine Learning Engineer to support our mission.

This role is based in San Francisco or New York as an in-office 2 days per week on a hybrid work model or Remote.

About the Team

This role is part of the Safety Engineering team at Patreon. Safety Engineering is responsible for using engineering techniques to reduce risks to creators, fans, and Patreon. This includes content moderation, fraud detection, and account integrity. You’ll be joining a team with established machine learning engineers, with experience putting ML models into production to drive real impact. We partner closely with policy and Trust & Safety Operations to accomplish our mission. This team is part of Patreon’s risk org which includes Safety Engineering, Identity Engineering, and Information Security teams.

About the Role

• Explore data and real-world cases to develop signals and machine learning models that identify and reduce platform risk.

• Partner with cross-functional teams (product, engineering, design, legal, Trust & Safety) to design practical ML solutions that fit real workflows.

• Analyze and prepare training data, including working with crowdsourced labeling and human-in-the-loop processes.

• Prototype, train, and iterate on machine learning models, using a mix of established and novel techniques.

• Own the path from idea to production: deploy ML and signal-based models, and write backend code when needed to support them.

• Build observability into models, debug performance gaps, and continuously improve based on real-world results.

• Measure impact using offline evaluation and experiments such as A/B tests.

About You

• You’ve worked on end-to-end machine learning systems, from data exploration and signal development through model deployment, monitoring, and experimentation.

• You write clean, reliable production code (Python or similar) and bring a thoughtful, detail-oriented approach to code reviews.

• You’re comfortable debugging complex systems and use a systematic approach to understand what’s going wrong.

• You’re naturally curious and enjoy digging into messy datasets to understand products, users, and edge cases.

• You’re motivated by working on high-stakes, real-world problems where ML systems operate at scale and outcomes matter.

• You communicate clearly, whether that’s writing design docs, explaining tradeoffs, or sharing results with partners.

• You’re excited about building early versions of systems and seeing them grow into high-impact, widely used solutions.

• You care deeply about using machine learning responsibly to support and protect creators, and you’re excited to grow your expertise in Trust & Safety over time.

• Masters in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, a related field, or the equivalent OR a minimum of 5 years of Machine Learning experience.

About Patreon

Patreon powers creators to do what they love and get paid by the people who love what they do. Our team is passionate about making this mission and our core values come to life every day in our work. Through this work, our Patronauts:

• Put Creators First | They’re the reason we’re here. When creators win, we win.

• Build with Craft | We sign our name to every deliverable, just like the creators we serve.

• Make it Happen | We don’t quit. We learn and deliver.

• Win Together | We grow as individuals. We win as a team.

We hire talented and passionate people from different backgrounds because workplace diversity and inclusion is critical to our ability to serve creators worldwide. If you’re excited about a role but your past experience doesn’t match with every bullet point outlined above, we strongly encourage you to apply anyway. If you’re a creator at heart, are energized by our mission, and share our company values, we’d love to hear from you.

Patreon is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We provide employment opportunities without regard to age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any other protected class. If you need a reasonable accommodation during the interview process, please let us know via email at accommodations@patreon.

Patreon offers a competitive benefits package including and not limited to salary, equity plans, healthcare, flexible time off, company holidays and recharge days, commuter benefits, lifestyle stipends, learning and development stipends, patronage, parental leave, and 401k plan with matching.

Patreon operates under a hybrid work model, where employees based in office locations are expected to come into the office two days per week, excluding sick time and paid leave. The goal of this policy is to be intentional about the in-person time we spend together to strengthen the feeling of community at Patreon. Candidates hired into remote-eligible roles are not expected to meet the same requirements.

At Patreon, we believe in fair and transparent pay. In compliance with New York and California pay transparency laws, we are sharing the expected salary range for this role.

The posted salary range is dependent on the location and the level. This range may encompass multiple levels within the role’s job family. The final offer will be based on candidate’s experience, skills, competencies, and geographic location, aligning with the appropriate job level within Patreon’s leveling framework. For remote employees located outside CA and NY, salary may vary based on location and local market conditions.

Patreon reserves the right to modify or update compensation and benefits at any time.