PHD Applied Machine Learning Engineer

About Nation Graph

Nation Graph is making public sector data accessible and actionable for businesses selling to cities, counties, state agencies, schools, and special districts. Nation Graph’s data and intelligence engine provides buying signals derived from millions of public sector sources. Founded in 2024, Nation Graph is dedicated to making uncommon knowledge common, because public data should actually be public. Learn more at

• Has successfully built, scaled, and sold companies in the past.
• Built software infrastructure processing billions of dollars in transactions.
• Is backed by world‑class VCs and operating partners who’ve invested in, and built, iconic companies.

• Build and product ionize end‑to‑end ML pipelines.
• Mine data from the web through large‑scale crawling and scraping to power our models and insights.
• Transform unstructured text data into structured knowledge with NLP, entity recognition, and custom models.
• Build and improve text classification models to organize complex data.
• Optimize retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) systems used in our product.
• Drive our data strategy by identifying new data sources.
• Solve open‑ended technical problems, teaching, learning, and iterating with the team.
• Work primarily in Python and SQL.

• A quantitative background (e.g., computer science, physics, math, or engineering)
• A strong mathematical and statistical foundation
• A doctorate degree in a quantitative field
• Proficiency in Python
• A strong sense of ownership and ability to work on open‑ended technical problems to drive commercial impact
• A passion for learning and growth, and for uncovering insights in complex data
• Excellent problem‑solving, communication, and collaboration skills in a fast‑paced environment

• Founder‑Level Exposure. Work closely with the CEO/CTO on all aspects of the business.
• A zero bureaucracy environment. We believe in moving extremely fast and making bold decisions without red tape.
• Solve real‑world problems that matter and work directly with interesting founders in their journey as they improve the infrastructure our government relies on at every level.
• Working with great people with a diversity of thought, an eagerness to learn, a boldness to challenge the status quo, and a deep care for the work we put out. If you align with us here, we strive to shape the working environment as such.

• Competitive salary + early‑stage equity
• Unlimited PTO
• High‑quality health insurance, dental & vision coverage
• Company provided lunches (Mon - Thur)

We believe in‑person work is our default. We’re building a team of people who desire to work side‑by‑side and shape the culture of a growing company. In our experiences, some of the best ideas come from being in the room, feeling the pain, hearing the nuance, and catching the details that are easy to miss.

At the same time, we’re flexible and supportive when working‑from‑home is needed to maintain a healthy, balanced work environment.

Compensation Range: $170K - $200K