Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Recommendation & AI Applications
Company websitenewsbreak.com (NewsBreak, opens in new tab)
Base salary $195K to $230K
Employer-published annual base salary, USD. Advertised base range in Mountain View, CA
You apply on the employer's own site. Six Figure Work does not handle applications.
- LocationMountain View, CA
- WorkplaceWorkplace not stated
- Status at last checkSource accepting applications when checked
- Last checked (1 h ago) · observed since
About this job
About NewsBreak
Local life runs on local information. What happened down the street? Who can fix this? Where should we go tonight? NewsBreak started in 2015 to answer these questions, and today more than 40 million people a month rely on us to follow what’s going on in their zip code.
Three platforms with one vision: powering local life. Led by founder and CEO Jeff Zheng, NewsBreak is our local life and news platform; Nearby AI connects people with local businesses; and NDot AI helps publishers and creators grow and earn.
Building for the long term. A $115 million Series C made us a unicorn in 2021, and we keep investing in our people. We’re Great Place to Work® certified and named to Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators (2025) and Fortune’s Best Workplaces in the Bay Area™ (2026).
Everyone makes an impact. Whether you write code, shape products, tell our story, or run the business, we want people who own projects end to end, stay curious, and speak up. Join us.
Learn more at: NewsBreak, Nearby AI, NDot AI
About the Role
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.
What You’ll Work On
Large-Scale Recommendation Systems
- Design, build, and iterate on high-throughput, low-latency recommendation systems powering NewsBreak’s core feeds.
- Improve retrieval, ranking, and multi-objective optimization 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.
AI & LLM Applications
- Apply LLMs and foundation models to recommendation-related problems such as content understanding, user intent modeling, and feature generation.
- Prototype quickly, validate with experiments, and push successful ideas into production.
AI-Driven Development
- Embrace AI-assisted development workflows, including LLM-powered coding, debugging, and analysis.
- Apply AI across feature ideation, prototyping, and experiment analysis.
0 → 1 Innovation
- Contribute to 0–1 AI-powered projects, helping take ideas from early exploration to MVP and production.
What We’re Looking For
Minimum Qualifications - 3+ years of industry experience building machine learning or recommendation systems in production. - Strong understanding of recommendation system fundamentals (ranking, embeddings, user/item modeling, experimentation). - Strong coding skills with Python / Java / Scala, and experience with PyTorch or TensorFlow. - 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.
Bonus / Plus Qualifications - 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.
Benefits
We offer a competitive benefits package:
- 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 NewsBreak, we design our overall rewards package to attract top talents. 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
CPRA Privacy Notice for California Candidates
Source: NewsBreak on Greenhouse · View original posting (opens in new tab)
Pay in context
This role's base floor ($195,000) is above 55% of the 1,514 Data & ML roles in California listed on this site; 8 others list the same floor. Their median floor is $187,500; the middle half runs from $159,200 to $229,375.
Only jobs on this site count, and each one publishes a base salary of $100,000 or more, so this compares six-figure jobs with each other, not with the whole market. Computed Nov 7, 2026.
This listingSenior Machine Learning Engineer, Recommendation & AI Applications$195K to $230K
Lead PM — Product Innovation$200K to $300K
Machine Learning Engineer, Local Search & Marketplace$190K to $300K
Senior PM — Core Experience$200K to $300K
Senior Machine Learning Engineer, User Signal & Ads$185K to $235K
Head of Growth & Go-to-Market$180K to $340K
Head of Content & Supply$180K to $240K
Chart as a table
| Role | Published base |
|---|---|
| Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Recommendation & AI Applications (this listing) | $195K - $230K |
| Lead PM — Product Innovation | $200K - $300K |
| Machine Learning Engineer, Local Search & Marketplace | $190K - $300K |
| Senior PM — Core Experience | $200K - $300K |
| Senior Machine Learning Engineer, User Signal & Ads | $185K - $235K |
| Head of Growth & Go-to-Market | $180K - $340K |
| Head of Content & Supply | $180K - $240K |
Observed changes
- First observed on the employer's board
- Began meeting the published-salary criteria
- Observed since
- Employer-stated posting date
- 2026-08-08
Where this pay comes from
Location as the employer wrote it: Mountain View, California, United States
USD 195,000 – 230,000 · interval unstated · pay_input_range · Annual Base Pay Range
- Method
- Structured pay field published by the employer
- Checked
- Rule set
- us-base-v2
The employer's job board publishes this pay as a dedicated data field. We read the field directly; no interpretation was needed.
What we verified
- The pay figures come from the employer's own listing, quoted exactly above.
- The pay is an annual base salary in US dollars with a minimum of at least $100,000.
- The role was publicly listed on the employer's job board when last checked.
We do not verify what the employer will actually offer, whether the employer is still recruiting for the role, or anything beyond what the employer published. Full methodology.