[Hiring] Staff Machine Learning Engineer @Quora

Role Description

This role will be working on our Quora product.

At Quora, machine learning drives nearly every aspect of our product, and our lean, high-velocity engineering team tackles complex, high-impact challenges daily. We thrive in a remote-first culture built on absolute autonomy, continuous learning, and bold experimentation.

We are looking for a Staff Machine Learning Engineer to define the technical future of Quora’s recommendation ecosystem. In this role, you will:

• Own the technical direction for feed ranking and retrieval.
• Lead our highest-impact modeling bets.
• Pioneer the integration of LLMs and generative models to redefine how we understand and rank content.
• Scale recommendation surfaces like notifications and digest emails.
• Architect the underlying tools and abstractions that empower our entire engineering organization.

This is a high-leverage, hands-on IC role with organization-wide scope. You will:

• Write production code.
• Mentor rising talent.
• Actively shape how our team leverages AI-assisted development to accelerate our shipping velocity.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction for Quora’s home feed recommendation systems.
• Lead the highest-impact projects across the recommender stack, from candidate generation and retrieval to ranking, re-ranking, and multi-objective optimization.
• Drive measurable improvements in user engagement and content quality through well-designed online experiments.
• Take end-to-end ownership of ML systems, including data pipelines, candidate extraction, feature engineering, model training, and production integration.
• Identify new opportunities to apply machine learning to different parts of the Quora product.
• Partner with product, data science, and infrastructure teams to align on priorities and tradeoffs.
• Mentor engineers and lead by example, raising the bar for code quality, modeling rigor, and AI-assisted dev velocity.

Minimum Requirements

• Availability for meetings and impromptu communication during Quora's “coordination hours” (Mon-Fri: 9am-3pm Pacific Time).
• 6+ years of professional software development experience in machine learning.
• 4+ years of professional experience building and optimizing Home Feed recommendation systems for social media and user-generated content platforms.
• Deep knowledge of the full recommender stack: candidate generation, retrieval, ranking, re-ranking, embeddings, and multi-objective optimization.
• Deep understanding of mathematical foundations of machine learning algorithms.
• Experience leading large-scale ML projects end-to-end with measurable outcomes.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills.
• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science.

Preferred Requirements

• 6+ years of experience writing Python or C++ code.
• Hands-on experience deploying and running generative models at scale.
• Background in notifications, email/digest recommendations, or growth and lifecycle modeling.
• Flexible and positive team player.
• Publications at venues like RecSys, KDD, NeurIPS, or ICML.
• Passion for Quora's mission and goals.

Benefits

• Medical/dental/vision coverage.
• Equity refreshers.
• Remote work reimbursement.
• Paid time off.
• Employee assistance programs.
• Benefits are country-specific and may vary.

Additional Information

• We are accepting applications on an ongoing basis. This role is a backfill for an existing vacancy.
• For US based applicants, the salary range is $219,989 - $320,613 USD + equity + benefits.
• For Toronto and Vancouver based applicants, the salary range is $282,469 - $329,337 CAD + equity + benefits.
• For all other locations in Canada, the salary range is $263,638 - $307,381 CAD + equity + benefits.
• In equity-eligible countries, we currently also offer a flexible equity program where a portion of equity compensation may be taken as cash.
• We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company.
• To ensure a secure hiring process, all final candidates will undergo identity verification and a comprehensive background check prior to onboarding.

Job Applicant Privacy Notice

https://careers.quora.com/quora-global-job-applicant-privacy-notice