Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Content Relevance, Level 7

Location: Bellevue, India | Los Angeles, Canada | Palo Alto, Canada | San Francisco, Canada | Seattle, India

Department: Engineering

Employment Type: Full time

About Snap Inc

Snap Inc is a technology company. We believe the camera presents the greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate. Snap contributes to human progress by empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together.

About the Role

Snap Inc is a camera company believing that the camera—and AR—represent the next frontier in human connection. Our products, including Snapchat, Lens Studio, and Spectacles, empower people to express themselves creatively, live in the moment, and explore the world through immersive AR experiences reaching hundreds of millions daily. The Content Relevance team powers the magic behind personalized Snaps, Stories, and Lenses, ensuring every user discovers content that sparks joy and creativity. As a Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Level 7, in Engineering, you'll lead the charge in revolutionizing how Snapchatters engage with our visual ecosystem, blending cutting-edge ML with Snap's innovative culture of speed, precision, and privacy. You'll drive the technical roadmap for our Content Relevance team, optimizing personalized video recommendation systems that scale to billions of daily interactions. Design and implement advanced ML architectures for content discovery, collaborating with product, design, and AR teams to integrate recommendations seamlessly into Snapchat's camera-first experiences. Stay ahead of ML advancements to tackle challenges like real-time personalization for AR Lenses and Spectacles, while advocating for best practices in scalability, reliability, and cost-efficiency. Your leadership will up-level our tech stack, influencing Snap's global engineering efforts to deliver fun, technically sophisticated products. Join a diverse, collaborative team in our 'Default Together' environment (4+ days in office weekly), where your expertise in recommendation systems will shape the future of creative communication. With competitive pay (Zone A: $276,000-$414,000 base; equity eligible), comprehensive benefits, and a commitment to equality, Snap fosters innovation through varied voices. If you're passionate about ML that enhances human expression via camera and AR, apply to make an impact at Snap.

What You'll Do

• Drive the technical roadmap of the Content Relevance team and optimize personalized video recommendation systems for Snapchat's billions of daily Snaps
• Advance core ML capabilities and design, implement, and scale the architecture of content recommendation systems, ensuring scalability, performance, and reliability for AR-enhanced content
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to align machine learning strategies with Snap's objectives in camera technology and AR innovation
• Stay up-to-date with the latest ML technologies and apply them to solve complex problems in personalized content discovery on Snapchat
• Collaborate with leadership to up-level the ML tech stack and improve organizational performance in a fast-paced creative environment
• Work across teams to understand product requirements, evaluate trade-offs, and deliver solutions for innovative AR Lenses and Spectacles integrations
• Advocate for and apply best practices in availability, scalability, operational excellence, and cost management
• Provide technical direction that influences Snap's engineering organization and empowers creative expression through relevant content
• Lead efforts to personalize content recommendations that enhance user engagement with Snapchat's visual messaging and AR features
• Mentor engineers on building ML models that power real-time content relevance in a privacy-first manner

Minimum Qualifications

• 9+ years of post-Bachelor’s machine learning experience; or a Master’s degree in a technical field + 8+ years of post-grad ML experience; or a PhD in a related technical field + 5+ years of post-grad ML experience
• 2+ years of experience with technical leadership or acting as the domain-expert to a technical organization
• Experience developing and shipping performant and scalable machine learning models for recommendation or ranking use cases
• Strong understanding of machine learning and deep learning approaches and algorithms, and their applications to recommendation domains
• Experience setting the direction for a team whose primary output is online ranking / recommendation models
• Excellent programming and software design skills
• Ability to proactively learn new concepts and technology and apply them at work

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with recommendation systems
• Experience with TensorFlow, PyTorch, or related deep learning frameworks
• Advanced degree in a related field such as machine learning, computer vision, or mathematics
• Experience partnering with cross-functional executives and management across a globally distributed organization
• Track record of delivery in rapidly changing, highly collaborative, multi-site, multi-stakeholder environments
• Experience contributing to AI publications

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

• Machine learning and deep learning algorithms
• Recommendation and ranking systems
• TensorFlow or PyTorch
• Scalable ML model design and optimization
• Programming (Python, C++, etc.)
• Software architecture for high-performance systems
• Technical leadership and mentorship
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Problem-solving in ambiguous environments
• Privacy-focused engineering practices
• AR and computer vision applications
• Real-time systems for content personalization
• Operational excellence and cost management
• Strategic roadmap development
• Influence across engineering organizations
• Rapid prototyping and iteration

Our Benefits

• Paid parental leave
• Comprehensive medical coverage
• Emotional and mental health support programs
• Compensation packages with equity in the form of RSUs to share in Snap’s long-term success
• Support for disabilities or special needs requiring accommodation
• "Default Together" policy fostering dynamic collaboration in office 4+ days per week
• Opportunities to work on innovative products reaching hundreds of millions of Snapchatters
• Commitment to diverse backgrounds and voices in a creative, fast-moving culture

Compensation

$276,000-$414,000 annually

This position is eligible for equity in the form of RSUs.

"Default Together" Policy: At Snap Inc, we practice a "default together" approach and expect team members to work in an office 4+ days per week.

Snap is proud to be an equal opportunity employer.