Staff+ Forward Deployed Research Engineer – Ranking

About Us
Sequen AI is leading the charge for building frontier ranking models for search and recommendations. Sequen AI's technology specializes in designing end-user behavior for large consumer enterprises.

The Role
We’re looking for a Staff+ Research Engineer with expertise in search and recommendation modeling to help us design, develop, and scale innovative ranking, embedding and retrieval models that power our personalized discovery platform. In this role, you’ll have the opportunity to work on impactful projects, from enhancing recommendation ranking systems to building search retrieval models, all while contributing to the underlying data pipelines and infrastructure.

This is an ideal role for someone eager to grow their skills, take ownership of complex systems, and be part of an agile, fast-paced environment.

What You'll Do

• Develop & Optimize Ranking Models: Build, train, and deploy advanced search and recommendation models using Deep Learning techniques.

• Data Engineering: Design and implement data pipelines to process large-scale datasets, ensuring models are fed with high-quality, reliable data.

• Infrastructure: Work with tools like Kubernetes, Airflow, and AWS to manage scalable model deployment and experimentation environments.

What We’re Looking For

• Experience: 7+ years of experience as an ML Engineer or similar role, with a focus on deep learning for search, recommendation, or related applications.

• Technical Expertise: Proficient in PyTorch, Deep Learning, and Spark, with a strong foundation in machine learning theory and algorithms.

• Data Engineering Skills: Hands-on experience with data pipelines and processing large-scale datasets. You'll design and optimize data pipelines using tools like Spark, Airflow, and dbt across GCP and AWS.

• Infrastructure Knowledge: Some familiarity with tools such as Kubernetes, Airflow, Terraform and cloud platforms like AWS for deployment and scalability.

• Problem Solver: Strong analytical and critical thinking skills, with a passion for tackling open-ended challenges.

Responsibilities

• Work within customer systems to design, build, and deploy production ranking and recommendation models that directly optimize for business revenue metrics such as conversion, engagement, and lifetime value.

• Deliver technical artifacts for customers including end-to-end ranking pipelines, embedding and retrieval systems, and model serving infrastructure that operate reliably at scale in production workflows.

• Provide white-glove deployment support for Sequen's ranking platform in large consumer enterprise environments, ensuring seamless integration with existing data ecosystems and business logic.

• Design and maintain production-grade data pipelines that power ML model training and inference, ensuring data quality, freshness, and reliability across the full model lifecycle — from feature engineering through real-time scoring.

• Identify and codify repeatable deployment patterns for ranking and recommendation systems across verticals, and contribute insights back to Sequen's Product and Engineering teams to accelerate future customer engagements.

• Own ML production use cases end-to-end — including model monitoring, A/B testing frameworks, performance regression detection, and continuous retraining strategies — to ensure ranking systems consistently drive measurable revenue impact.

• Maintain deep expertise in the latest developments in deep learning for search and recommendations, including advances in multi-stage retrieval, learning-to-rank architectures, and large-scale personalization techniques.

• Build long-term relationships with customers and proactively identify new opportunities to deploy ranking and recommendation solutions that unlock additional revenue throughout the lifecycle of an engagement.

• Be a champion for Sequen AI's mission of building frontier ranking models that shape end-user behavior for the world's largest consumer platforms.

What We Offer

• A collaborative and innovative work environment at the forefront of ML and AI.

• Opportunities to make a direct impact on product and technology direction.

• Annual Salary : $300,000—$350,000 USD (based on experience) + Equity + Bonus

• Health insurance, unlimited time off, awesome team

If you’re excited about building next-generation search and recommendation systems and growing your expertise in a dynamic startup, we’d love to hear from you!