Staff Applied Machine Learning Engineer, LLM Applications
Upstart
full-time
Posted on:
Location Type: Remote
Location: Remote • California, New York, Ohio, Texas • 🇺🇸 United States
Visit company websiteSalary
💰 $178,400 - $246,800 per year
Job Level
Lead
Tech Stack
CloudDockerFlaskKubernetesPythonReactTerraform
About the role
- Design and build user-facing ML features that harness LLMs and generative AI to unlock new product capabilities
- Partner with product, design, and ML research to prototype and deliver high-impact, ML-powered experiences
- Own the technical architecture and implementation strategy for applied ML systems - balancing latency, observability, and iteration speed
- Build scalable services and APIs that bring model outputs to users in trustworthy and intuitive ways
- Collaborate across platform, infra, and legal/compliance teams to ensure ML deployments meet standards for safety, fairness, and performance
- Establish and evangelize best practices for prompt design, model evaluation, and experimentation across the org
Requirements
- 6+ years of software engineering experience, with 2+ years working directly on ML-driven products or intelligent systems
- Proven ability to lead complex initiatives across engineering, product, and research stakeholders
- Strong backend development skills (e.g., Python with FastAPI or Flask), plus experience with cloud-native tooling (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform)
- Experience integrating LLMs or ML models into production systems, including APIs and user-facing applications
- Excellent communication skills and a collaborative, product-minded approach
- Ability to think rigorously about system design, latency tradeoffs, and user impact when working with ML features.
- Experience shipping GenAI or LLM-powered features using frameworks like LangChain, LlamaIndex, or OpenAI APIs (preferred)
- Familiarity with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector search (e.g., FAISS, Pinecone), and real-time inference patterns (preferred)
- Proficiency in full-stack development, including front-end work with React or similar frameworks (preferred)
- Strong intuition for prompt engineering, model testing, and evaluation methodologies (preferred)
- Experience navigating complex requirements around explainability, user trust, or compliance in ML applications (preferred)
- Track record of influencing architecture or product direction at a team or org level (preferred)
Benefits
- Competitive Compensation (base + bonus & equity)
- Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with Health Savings Account contributions from Upstart
- 401(k) with 100% company match up to $4,500 and immediate vesting and after-tax savings
- Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP)
- Life and disability insurance
- Generous holiday, vacation, sick and safety leave
- Supportive parental, family care, and military leave programs
- Annual wellness, technology & ergonomic reimbursement programs
- Social activities including team events and onsites, all-company updates, employee resource groups (ERGs), and other interest groups such as book clubs, fitness, investing, and volunteering
- Catered lunches + snacks & drinks when working in offices
Applicant Tracking System Keywords
Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.
Hard skills
machine learningbackend developmentPythonFastAPIFlaskcloud-native toolingKubernetesDockerTerraformfull-stack development
Soft skills
communicationcollaborationsystem designrigorous thinkingproduct-minded approachleadershipinfluencing architectureevaluation methodologiesprompt engineeringuser trust