This is a hybrid role based in our Palo Alto or San Francisco offices and will require you to be in office Tuesdays and Thursdays.
What's so interesting about this role?
We at Grindr believe that AI can revolutionize the dating industry. Our Machine Learning Engineer is responsible for building high quality ML datasets at scale, used to train ML models that power AI-centric features. In this pivotal role, you will have the opportunity to build foundational tools and data pipelines to ingest, normalize and clean the valuable data and features that would be fundamental for our ML engineers in Grindr to build AI tools including recommendations, LLMs, ads, visual search, growth/notifications, trust and safety.
What's the job?
We're looking for an exceptional Machine Learning Engineer who is passionate about AI and values it can bring to Grindr, Who loves building Models at scale; and who is committed to the hard work necessary to continuously improve our AI products.
In this position, you will be responsible for establishing and executing the strategy for our organization's Machine Learning products.
Responsibilities:

• Feature engineering at scale. This includes handling missing values, removing duplicates, and transforming data into a suitable format for analysis and model training. For recommendation systems, it might also involve normalizing user ratings, encoding categorical data, or processing textual and image data with NLP and computer vision techniques.
• Feature Store Implementation: Building or integrating a feature store to manage, share, and reuse features across ML projects, ensuring consistency and reducing redundancy in feature engineering efforts. This project would involve understanding the needs of ML models and creating a centralized repository for features.
• Model Training and Evaluation Support: providing support for model training and evaluation, including setting up data splits for training, validation, and testing, and ensuring that data is correctly partitioned and accessible to the ML models. They might also work on optimizing data processing for GPU-based training environments.
  requiring a blend of skills in software engineering, data management, and an understanding of ML workflows
• Exploratory/statistical data analysis (EDA)

What we'll love about you

• Bachelors in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, or a related fields
• 5+ years of experience as a Machine Learning engineer building production-level pre/post-processing data pipelines for ML/DL modelExperience in statistical analysis & visualization on datasets using SQL, Pandas or R
• Demonstrated prior experience in creating data cleaning pipelines for text data sets NLP/ large language models
• Transform research prototypes into high-quality production code, ensuring systems are maintainable, scalable and performant.
• Ability to produce well-engineered software, including appropriate automated test suites, technical documentation, and operational strategy
• Excellent coding skills in Python, Java, bash, SQL, and expertise with Git version control
• Experience using big data technologies (Snowflake, Airflow, Kubernetes, Docker, Helm, Spark, pySpark)
• Experience with building machine/deep learning models with at least one common framework such as PyTorch, Tensorflow, or Keras.
• Experience with any public cloud environment - AWS, GCP or Azure

We'll really swoon if you have

• Good understanding of classical ML models
• Experience with vector databases (store , retrieve , rank) for LLM, RecSys, etc.
• Experience with NLP-text-data preprocessing and labeling
• Experience image dataset management, transformation and labeling for computer vision. Experience in recommendation systems Experience with Kubernetes and building Docker images

• Strong understanding of applied machine learning and deep learning topics
• Be familiar with legal compliance (with data management tools) data classification, and retention
• Consistent track record of implementing end-to-end machine learning models from data cleaning to model deployment

What you'll love about us

• Mission and Impact: Grindr is building the global gayborhood in your pocket. Your role will impact the lives of millions of LGBTQ+ people around the world. Through our success, we are making a world where the lives of our community are free, equal, and just.
• Family Insurance: Insurance premium coverage for health, dental, and vision for you and partial coverage for your dependents.
• Retirement Savings: Generous 401K plan with 6% match and immediate vest in the U.S.
• Compensation: Industry-competitive compensation and eligibility for company bonus and equity programs.
• Queer-Inclusive Benefits: Industry-leading gender-affirming offerings with up to 90% cost coverage, access to Included Health, monthly stipends for HRT, and more.
• Additional Benefits: Flexible vacation policy, monthly stipends for cell phone, internet, wellness, food, and commuting, breakfast/lunch provided onsite, and yearly travel & leisure stipend.

About Grindr
Grindr is building the global gayborhood in your pocket. With more than 13.5 million monthly active users, Grindr has become a fundamental part of the LGBTQ+ community and is charting a path to make the world more free, equal, and just. Since 2015, Grindr for Equality has advanced safety, health, and human rights for millions of Grindr users and the global LGBTQ+ community in partnership with more than 100 community organizations in every region of the world.
Our next evolution is underway as a public company that continues to grow and build meaningful experiences for our users. From social issues to product innovations, we're setting audacious goals for our community and the business, and leveraging the latest tech stacks and a culture of engineering excellence to make it happen. At the heart of our work in this new chapter is a shared set of operating principles centered around cultivating curiosity, thinking big, setting and expediting our ambitious goals, and growing through iteration; all while keeping our users #1.
Grindr is headquartered in West Hollywood, California, with offices in the Bay Area, Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C. With a track record of strong financial performance and plans for continued headcount growth, we're building a team of talented, passionate, and open-minded people who want to disrupt the dating app space, innovate products, and advance LGBTQ+ culture. Come be a part of this exciting journey with us.
Grindr is an equal-opportunity employer
To learn more about how we handle the personal data of applicants, visit our Employee and Candidate Privacy Policy .
#LI-Hybrid
Grindr is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. This base pay range is for the U.S. and is not applicable to locations outside of the U.S. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, such as training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs, location, and market demands. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. This role will also be eligible for equity, benefits, and a company bonus program.
Bay Area Base Pay Range
$208,000 - $244,500 USD