Sr. Software Engineer, ML & AI

About BuzzFeed, Inc.

BuzzFeed, Inc. (Ticker: BZFD) is home to the best of the internet. Across food, news, pop culture, and commerce, our brands drive conversation and inspire what audiences watch, read, buy, and obsess over next. Born on the internet in 2006, BuzzFeed, Inc. is committed to improving it: providing trusted, quality, brand-safe news and entertainment to hundreds of millions of people; making content on the internet more inclusive, empathetic, and creative; and inspiring our audience to live better lives. We'll continue to recruit the best founders and creators to join us in this mission, with more additions like HuffPost to come.

Business Area: Technology
Job Category: Engineering
Salary: $154,000.00- $170,000.00 USD 
Union Status: Non-Union 

BuzzFeed Inc. is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. We reserve the ability to adjust the final compensation for this role based on the final candidate's experience, skillset, certifications, and geography.

The Role

BuzzFeed is hiring an engineer to join the Machine Learning team. All types of engineering backgrounds will be considered. Strong candidates are excited by recent advancements in generative AI and are eager to use LLMs and image-generation models to build experiences that BuzzFeed readers will love. This is a full-time, remote role, though we do provide workspace in our LA and NYC-based offices if you prefer to work in-office.

BuzzFeed’s Machine Learning team is made up of data scientists and engineers collaborating on the ML models and infrastructure that power BuzzFeed Inc. products. These range from internal tools used by journalists and editors to experiences that millions of readers engage with as they consume our content across websites and apps. You’ll get to collaborate with some of the best in the business, working closely with creative teams, and launching innovative content capabilities powered by LLMs and generative models. Recent examples of the team’s work include an AI cooking assistant, a way to turn your pet into a plushie, and this AI Shrek generator that you never knew you needed.

You Will

• You’ll maintain data pipelines to keep content and user embeddings up to date
• You’ll use LLM’s to summarize, categorize, and label data
• You’ll use RAG to ground LLMs with accurate knowledge 
• You'll partner closely with Data Science to develop and optimize machine learning models
• You’ll work across the org with software engineers, designers, product managers, and data analysts to understand and shape work at all different stages of its lifecycle
• You'll build stable, resilient, and high performance software
• You'll use a variety of languages and both internal and third party platforms 
• You’ll test and iterate, always measuring the effectiveness of your work

You Have

• You have 1 to 3 years of experience using and building web APIs. Machine Learning experience is a plus, but not required
• You are a skilled and empathetic engineer who enjoys contributing to and leading technical projects and working with engineers at all levels
• You adapt quickly to change and love to ship and iterate, building on insights and data
• You have experience working with cloud-based resources on Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud Platform.
• You are proficient with Python or Go
• You are comfortable working in SQL (BigQuery) on data sets 
• You are an excellent communicator and comfortable working on a remote team

Our development process:

• Internally-maintained, Docker-based development environment
• Github-hosted mono-repo, with code reviews and integrated CI/CD deployment
• Collaborative, low-ego engineering culture
• Monitoring and instrumentation are essential to our work. We use a combination of Datadog, Sentry, and proprietary services
• We believe in ownership over the entire engineering cycle - the same engineer architects, build, test, deploy, monitor, and run their services using containers on AWS/GCP.
• We use BigQuery as our data warehouse, ingesting nearly 2 TB of new data per day.

To Apply:

• Resume
• Describe a technical project you've worked on from conception to completion. What was the impact? Note: it doesn't need to be ML/AI related.
• What recent developments in ML/AI are you excited about? What guardrails are important when applying these systems?
• This is a remote position on a distributed team. What strategies have you found useful while working remotely with others?

"If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at applicationhelp@buzzfeed.com. Requests received for non-disability related issues, such as following up on an application, will not receive a response."

Life at BuzzFeed, Inc.

We celebrate inclusion and are committed to equal opportunity employment. We are  proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, and will not be discriminated against based on age, race, gender, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability or any other protected category.

You can expect:

• A supportive, inclusive atmosphere on a team that values your contributions
• Opportunities for personal and professional growth through work experience, offerings from our in-house Learning @ BuzzFeed team, our Employee Resource Groups, and more
• An attractive and equitable compensation package, including salary.
• A generous benefits program featuring paid time off, unlimited sick time, comprehensive medical benefits, a family leave policy, access to mental health platforms, retirement plans, gym and wellness discounts, and much more.

Note: BuzzFeed, Inc. offers remote/flexible work (unless specified to be required to be in-person) and open to hiring remote candidates who are residents in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, HI, IL, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MS, MT, NC, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OH, OR, PA, TX, VA, WA, and WV. For non sales roles, we can also hire in AK, AR, AZ, ID, KS, MO, ND, SC, and VT.