Senior Recommendation Engineer

The problem you will own

Most recommendation systems optimize for the next click. Ours has to support an infrequent, expensive, high-consequence household decision, where the right recommendation is sometimes to do nothing. You will build recommendation and matching across three surfaces: which content to surface to which user and when in a large content feed; an event-triggered engagement system that responds to changes in a user's situation; and two-sided matching between customers and service professionals under explicit fairness constraints. Ranking is never for sale, and the objective functions you design must reflect that.

Responsibilities

Build and own the recommendation and ranking systems for feed surfaces, from candidate generation through online experimentation and monitoring.

Design the event-triggered engagement engine with the messaging platform team: condition detection, propensity and uplift modeling, frequency management, and holdouts.

Build customer-to-professional matching, starting with transparent rules and evolving to learned ranking, with an explicit fairness and exposure contract so new, high-quality providers can win work.

Define evaluation frameworks that treat downstream outcomes and negative signals, including complaints and "do not proceed" recommendations, as first-class objectives.

Contribute learnings back to the company's pricing and intent models owned by the AI team.

Qualifications

Required

5+ years of machine-learning or software engineering, including 3+ years shipping recommendation or ranking systems in production.

Built and operated a ranking system at consumer scale, millions of users, including candidate generation, ranking, and monitoring.

Substantial online experimentation experience on ranking changes, and can explain at least one test that failed and why.

Deployed an uplift, causal, or counterfactual model in production, or can give a rigorous account of why click-based objectives are wrong for rare, high-cost decisions.

Strong Python plus at least one of Java, Scala, or Go; production experience with feature stores and streaming pipelines.

Ability to explain modeling decisions to product and business stakeholders and to defend experimental design under commercial pressure.

Preferred

Feed or notification ranking at a content or media company.

Two-sided marketplace matching with fairness or exposure constraints in production.

Domains with low-frequency, high-consequence decisions such as insurance, healthcare, or real estate.

Publications or open-source contributions in recommendation, causal inference, or marketplace design.

The US base salary range for this full-time position is listed below. Pay may vary based on a number of factors including job-related skills, level, experience, geographic location and relevant education or training. At NewsBreak, we design our overall rewards package to attract top talents. Depending on the position, the role may also be eligible for discretionary bonus and options. Your recruiter can share more details during the hiring process.

Annual Base Pay Range

$150,000—$300,000 USD