Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Recommendation & AI

About News Break

Founded in 2015, News Break is the Content Intelligence platform shaping the future content economy. With over 40 million monthly active users, our flagship platform delivers highly personalized local news and information powered by advanced AI, recommendation systems, and adtech. Recognized by Fast Company as #32 on the Top Workplaces for Innovators, we’re proud to be Great Place to Work® certified and home to a dynamic team of technologists, product innovators, and business leaders passionate about solving meaningful challenges ether, we reached unicorn status in 2021, and we remain committed to continuing this high‑growth trajectory with the right team to fulfill our mission: building the infrastructure layer for content intelligence.

We are looking for a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to help evolve our large‑scale recommendation systems and apply AI / LLM technologies to real‑world production problems. You will work on core feed, retrieval, and ranking systems serving tens of millions of users, while also participating in AI‑driven innovation projects that explore new ways to improve content discovery, personalization, and developer productivity.

This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy strong individual ownership
, hands‑on development, and translating ideas into reliable systems.

• Design, build, and iterate on high‑throughput, low‑latency recommendation systems powering News Break’s core feeds.
• Improve retrieval, ranking, and multi‑objective optimisation to balance engagement, retention, content quality, and business metrics.
• Own systems from offline training → online inference → A/B experimentation → metric analysis.
• Identify and resolve issues related to data quality, model drift, and system performance in production.

• Apply LLMs and foundation models to recommendation‑related problems such as content understanding, user intent modelling, and feature generation.
• Prototype quickly, validate with experiments, and push successful ideas into production.

• Embrace AI-assisted development workflows, including LLM‑powered coding, debugging, and analysis.
• Apply AI across feature ideation, prototyping, and experiment analysis.

• Contribute to 0–1 AI‑powered projects, helping take ideas from early exploration to MVP and production.

• 3+ years of industry experience building machine learning or recommendation systems in production.
• Strong understanding of recommendation system fundamentals (ranking, embeddings, user/item modelling, experimentation).
• Strong coding skills with Python / Java / Scala, and experience with PyTorch or Tensor Flow.
• Experience working with large‑scale data and ML systems (e.g., Spark, distributed training, real‑time inference).
• Ability to own features end‑to‑end and deliver measurable business impact.

• Production experience applying AI or LLMs to recommendation systems.
• Experience contributing to 0 → 1 AI or ML‑driven products.
• Familiarity with AI‑assisted development tools and workflows.

• Health, dental, and vision care for you and your family (100% coverage for employee).
• Top‑tier 401(K) plan with company matching.
• Paid time off and paid holidays.
• FSA, HSA, and commuter benefits programs.
• Team activity budget.

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 News Break, we design our overall rewards package to attract top talent. 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

$195,000—$230,000 USD

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