Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Recommendations, Quora (Remote)

[Quora is a privately held, "remote-first" company https://www.quora.com/q/quora/Remote-First-at-Quora. This position can be performed remotely from multiple countries around the world. Please visit careers.quora.com/eligible-countries http://careers.quora.com/eligible-countries for details regarding employment eligibility by country.]

ABOUT QUORA

Quora’s mission is to grow the world's collective intelligence. To do so, we have two platforms

• Quora http://quora.com: a global knowledge sharing platform with over 300M monthly unique visitors, bringing people together to share insights on various topics and providing a unique platform to learn and connect with others.
• Poe https://poe.com/: a platform providing millions of global users with one place to chat, explore and build with a wide variety of AI language models (bots), including Claude-Opus-4.7, Nano-Banana-2, GPT-Image-2, GPT-5.5, GPT-5.5-Pro, and more. As AI capabilities rapidly advance, Poe provides a single platform to instantly integrate and utilize these new models.

Behind these products are passionate, collaborative, and high-performing global teams. We have a culture rooted in transparency, idea-sharing, and experimentation that allows us to celebrate success and grow together through meaningful work. Join us on this journey to create a positive impact and make a significant change in the world.

This role will be working on our Quora product.

ABOUT THE TEAM AND ROLE

Our small engineering team works on challenging problems every day. We have a culture that's rooted in constantly learning and improving, and our engineers are encouraged to think big and experiment with new ideas. As a remote-first company, our engineers have a high degree of flexibility and autonomy. Everyone on the engineering team has a significant impact on our product and our company. We are looking for an experienced Machine Learning engineer to join our growing engineering team, working on recommendation systems such as feed, notifications, and Quora’s famous digest emails and A2A. At Quora, we use machine learning in almost every part of the product and recommendation systems play an important role in connecting users with content.

As a recommendation systems expert, you will have a unique opportunity to have high impact by advancing our ranking systems as well as uncovering new opportunities to apply machine learning to the Quora product. You will also play a key role in developing tools and abstractions that our other developers will build on top of.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Improve our existing machine learning systems using your core coding skills and ML knowledge
• Identify new opportunities to apply machine learning to different parts of the Quora product
• Work with other machine learning engineers to implement algorithms and systems efficiently
• Take end-to-end ownership of machine learning systems - data pipelines, candidate extraction, feature engineering, model training, as well as integration into our production systems

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

• Availability for meetings and impromptu communication during Quora's “coordination hours https://quora.com/coordination_hours" (Mon-Fri: 9am-3pm Pacific Time)
• 5+ years of professional software development experience in machine learning
• 3+ years of professional experience working on recommendation systems
• Good understanding of mathematical foundations of machine learning algorithms
• Previous experience building end-to-end machine learning systems.
• Good communication and interpersonal skills
• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field

PREFERRED REQUIREMENTS

• 3+ years of experience writing Python or C++ code
• Experience with leading large-scale multi-engineer projects
• Flexible and positive team player with outstanding interpersonal skills
• Passion for Quora's mission and goals

At Quora, we value diversity and inclusivity and welcome individuals from all backgrounds, including marginalized or underrepresented groups in tech, to apply for our job openings. We encourage all candidates who share a passion for growing the world’s knowledge, even those who may not strictly meet all the preferred requirements, to apply, as we know that a diverse range of perspectives can have a significant impact on our products and our culture.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

We are accepting applications on an ongoing basis. This role is a backfill for an existing vacancy.

Quora offers a wide range of benefits including medical/dental/vision coverage, equity refreshers, remote work reimbursement, paid time off, employee assistance programs, and more. Benefits are country-specific and may vary.

There are many factors that will determine the starting pay, including but not limited to experience, location, education, and business needs.

• US candidates only: For US based applicants, the salary range is $219,989 - $320,613 USD + equity + benefits.
• Canada candidates only: For Toronto and Vancouver based applicants, the salary range is $288,502 - $336,370 CAD + equity + benefits. For all other locations in Canada, the salary range is $269,269 - $313,946 CAD + equity + benefits.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

AI technology may assist in sorting applications and recording interview notes, but all decisions are made by a member of our team.

To ensure a secure hiring process, all final candidates will undergo identity verification and a comprehensive background check prior to onboarding.