Senior Staff Applied AI Engineer
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Job Location:
San Francisco, CA - USA
Monthly Salary:
$ 242240 - 344000
Posted on:
30+ days ago
Vacancies:
1 Vacancy
Job Summary
About Quizlet:
At Quizlet our mission is to help every learner achieve their outcomes in the most effective and delightful way. Our $1B learning platform serves tens of millions of students every month including two-thirds of U.S. high schoolers and half of U.S. college students powering over 2 billion learning interactions monthly.
We blend cognitive science with machine learning to personalize and enhance the learning experience for students professionals and lifelong learners alike. Were energized by the potential to power more learners through multiple approaches and various tools.
Lets Build the Future of Learning
Join us to design and deliver AI-powered learning tools that scale across the world and unlock human potential.
About the Team (Applied AI):
Our mission is to invent and deploy the next generation of intelligent personalized and adaptive learning experiences. Were consolidating AI efforts across the company into a unified portfolio and are accountable for a disproportionate share of Quizlets growth and product differentiation. Youll partner closely with Product Data Science and the AI & Data Platform to deliver an AIdriven learning coach thats recognized as bestinclass.
About the Role:
As a Sr. Staff Applied AI Engineer you will be the handson technical leader shaping Quizlets AI development in one of the two complementary domains:
- Personalization & Ranking retrieval and ranking systems that match learners with the right content experiences and monetization moments across surfaces (search feed notifications ads).
- Generative AI & Agentic Systems LLMpowered tutoring content understanding/synthesis and tools that boost learner outcomes and creator productivity.
You will architect and ship a variety of models and modeling systems (from TwoTower retrieval and multitask rankers to RAG/LLM pipelines) ensure robust evaluation and responsible deployment and mentor senior engineers to multiply impact across the org.
Were happy to share that this is an onsite position in our San Francisco office. To help foster team collaboration we require that employees be in the office a minimum of three days per week: Monday Wednesday and Thursday and as needed by your manager or the company. We believe that this working environment facilitates increased work efficiency team partnership and supports growth as an employee and organization.
In this role you will:
- Own the technical roadmap for applied AI spanning personalization ranking search recommendations and GenAI/LLM systems; tie modeling work directly to business metrics (engaged learners conversion retention revenue)
- Design endtoend ML systems: candidate sourcing embedding platforms & ANN retrieval multistage ranking (early/late) and value modeling with guardrails for fairness and integrity
- Lead LLMbased features: stand up RAG pipelines instruction/preferencetuning (e.g. SFT/DPO/RLstyle) prompt engineering and latency/costaware inference strategies; define offline evals humanintheloop and online success metrics
- Create a Learner 360 representation by synthesizing behavior signals explicit inputs and conversational context into robust embeddings reused across surfaces
- Institutionalize evaluation: build an eval harness for both ranking and generative systems (offline metrics like NDCG/AUC/BLEU/BERTScore; quality/safety scorecards; interrater reliability) and close the loop with online A/B experiments
- Ship reliably at scale: drive trainingserving consistency drift detection canarying rollbacks oncall standards for model services and strong CI/CD for features & models
- Mentor and uplevel a highperforming group of ML/SWE peers; set crisp technical direction and raise the bar on code quality experimentation rigor and reproducibility
- Partner deeply with Product Design Legal and Data Science on objectives risk/benefit tradeoffs and responsible AI practices
- Stay current with the state of the art (RecSys LLMs multimodal) and selectively introduce methods that measurably improve learner outcomes
What you bring to the table:
- 10 years of industry experience in applied ML/AI or MLheavy software engineering including stafflevel impact leading crossfunctional efforts endtoend
- BS/MS/PhD in CS ML or related quantitative field (or equivalent experience)
- Proven record shipping largescale ranking/personalization or search systems (retrieval TwoTower/dual encoders multitask rankers) and improving online metrics (e.g. CTR session depth retention)
- Handson with LLM/GenAI systems: data curation finetuning (SFT/PEFT preference optimization) prompt engineering evaluation and productionization (latency/cost/safety)
- Deep fluency in Python/PyTorch data and feature engineering distributed training/inference on GPUs and modern MLOps (model registry feature stores monitoring drift)
- Strong experiment design (offline/online) metrics literacy and skills translating ambiguous product goals into tractable modeling roadmaps
- Demonstrated technical leadership: mentoring senior engineers setting architecture and driving consensus amid ambiguity
Bonus points if you have:
- EdTech or consumer mobile experience; conversational tutoring or learning scienceinformed modeling
- Publications/opensource with RecSys/LLMs (e.g. RecSys KDD NeurIPS ICLR ACL) or contributions to safety/guardrails tooling
- Experience building on a modern MLOps stack (feature mgmt orchestration streaming online inference at scale)
Compensation Benefits & Perks:
- Quizlet is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Salary transparency helps to mitigate unfair hiring practices when it comes to discrimination and pay gaps. Total compensation for this role is market competitive including a starting base salary of $242240 - $344000 depending on location and experience as well as company stock options
- Collaborate with your manager and team to create a healthy work-life balance
- 20 vacation days that we expect you to take!
- Competitive health dental and vision insurance (100% employee and 75% dependent PPO Dental VSP Choice)
- Employer-sponsored 401k plan with company match
- Access to LinkedIn Learning and other resources to support professional growth
- Paid Family Leave FSA HSA Commuter benefits and Wellness benefits
- 40 hours of annual paid time off to participate in volunteer programs of choice
Why Join Quizlet
Massive reach: 60M users 1B interactions per week
Cutting-edge tech: Generative AI adaptive learning cognitive science
Strong momentum: Top-tier investors sustainable business real traction
Mission-first: Work that makes a difference in peoples lives
Inclusive culture: Committed to equity diversity and belonging
We strive to make everyone feel comfortable and welcome!
We work to create a holistic interview process where both Quizlet and candidates have an opportunity to view what it would be like to work together in exploring a mutually beneficial partnership.
We provide a transparent setting that gives a comprehensive view of who we are!
In Closing:
At Quizlet were excited about passionate people joining our teameven if you dont check every box on the requirements list. We value unique perspectives and believe everyone has something meaningful to contribute. Our culture is all about taking initiative learning through challenges and striving for high-quality work while staying curious and open to new ideas. We believe in honest respectful communication thoughtful collaboration and creating a supportive space where everyone can grow and succeed together.
Quizlets success as an online learning community depends on a strong commitment to diversity equity and inclusion.
As an equal opportunity employer and a tech company committed to societal change we welcome applicants from all backgrounds. Women people of color members of the LGBTQ community individuals with disabilities and veterans are strongly encouraged to apply. Come join us!
To All Recruiters and Placement Agencies:
At this time Quizlet does not accept unsolicited agency resumes and/or profiles.
Please do not forward unsolicited agency resumes to our website or to any Quizlet employee. Quizlet will not pay fees to any third-party agency or firm nor will it be responsible for any agency fees associated with unsolicited resumes. All unsolicited resumes received will be considered the property of Quizlet.
#LI-FT
We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process such as reviewing applications analyzing resumes or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed please contact us.
Required Experience:
Staff IC
Key Skills
- Computer Science
- Docker
- Kubernetes
- Python
- VMware
- C/C++
- Go
- System Architecture
- gRPC
- OS Kernels
- Perl
- Distributed Systems
About Company
Quizlet makes simple learning tools that let you study anything. Start learning today with flashcards, games and learning tools — all for free.
