Senior Machine Learning Engineer

As a Senior ML Engineer at Thorn, this role will build, deploy and maintain world class models, classifiers and algorithms to increase Thorn’s capabilities to achieve our mission of the elimination of child sexual exploitation. They will directly contribute to the Machine Learning team’s critical function in Thorn’s mission - building automated solutions that:

Reduce the time it takes to identify a child sexual abuse victim, elevating the most vulnerable and high risk victims from an ocean of online content

Enable the removal of child sexual abuse material from the internet, finding known and new content

Prevent abuse from happening in the first place, detecting abusive content and behavior before it spreads

They are responsible for ensuring that their work is high quality, as well as collaborating with other ML Engineers to ensure team success. They will thrive in highly ambiguous problem spaces and be able to creatively build scalable solutions with minimum direction. They demonstrate persistence and strong technical expertise to navigate legal, product, and technical constraints. They are responsible for partnering with the engineers, product manager and designers across different products to drive requirements, as well as any relevant external partners, taking into account all parties’ needs.

What You’ll Do

Own end-to-end model development: design, build, test and maintain machine learning systems and algorithms

Identify data sourcing and labeling needs for your work, partnering with the Sr. Technical Program Manager to ensure data requirements are visible and prioritized.

Work closely with specialists at Thorn to create data labeling guides and support labeling efforts. This may involve engaging with sexually explicit material that is not child sexual abuse material

Review system design/code in close collaboration with other ML Engineers

Collaborate with engineers on product teams to maintain and deploy models, algorithms, and model serving infrastructure

Clearly communicate and document problem formulation, feature design, training, and evaluation results to technical and non-technical audiences

Build relationships and collaborate with external partners

Present technical work at conferences and other external forums, representing Thorn and sharing insights with the community

Identify novel solutions for solving online child safety problems. Stay abreast of technical developments and breakthroughs with an eye towards applying solutions to our issue space.

Collaborate with product managers, designers, and product owners to define scope of work and drive understanding of user needs

Conduct data analysis as needed to improve cross-functional understanding

Collaborate with product and engineering in pre-planning/planning sessions, software design, and model development sessions

Collaborate with UX to engage with users, translating user needs into features and deliverables

What We’re Looking For

You have a commitment to putting the children we serve at the center of everything you do

You have a willingness to learn about online child safety and victim identification.

You have 5+ years background in machine learning and/or artificial intelligence. You also have a Ph.D or master’s degree in a quantitative field, or equivalent professional experience.

You have experience in designing and building machine learning systems and pipelines for production

You have experience deploying computer vision and/or natural language processing in production.

You have an ability and interest in learning new technologies quickly

You can work with ambiguity, shifting requirements, and collaborate with cross-functional internal and external stakeholders

You have a passion for machine learning and an aptitude to work in a collaborative environment, can demonstrate empathy for your team and strong advocacy for our users, while balancing the vision and technical constraints of engineering

You communicate clearly, efficiently, and thoughtfully. We’re a highly-distributed team, so written communication is crucial

Technologies We Use (for relevant roles)

AWS

Python

Pandas

PyTorch

scikit-learn/scipy

Terraform

CI/CD Pipelines

Tensorflow with Keras

Hugging Face Transformers/Diffusers

OpenCV

FAISS or other vector stores

ONNX/onnxruntime

Kubernetes

Compensation and Benefits

A reasonable estimate of the compensation range for this role is $154,000 - $212,750/year. This range takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions, including but not limited to location; skill sets; experience and training; licensure, and certifications.