# Senior Applied ML Engineer

**Company:** [Upstart](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/upstart)
**Location:** Remote
**Role:** ML Engineering
**Salary:** $159k – $232k/yr
**Experience:** 4+ years
**Skills:** Python, FastAPI, Flask, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, LLMs, LangChain, llamaindex, OpenAI, RAG, faiss, pinecone, React
**Posted:** 2026-07-29

> Senior Applied ML Engineer building and shipping user-facing LLM and generative AI features. Own architecture for production ML systems, partner cross-functionally with product/research teams, and establish best practices for prompt engineering and model evaluation. Requires 4+ years software engineering with 2+ years on ML products, strong backend skills.

## Job Description

## How you’ll make an impact

- 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

## Minimum qualifications

- 4+ 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

## Preferred qualifications

- Experience shipping GenAI or LLM-powered features using frameworks like LangChain, LlamaIndex, or OpenAI APIs
- Familiarity with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector search (e.g., FAISS, Pinecone), and real-time inference patterns
- Proficiency in full-stack development, including front-end work with React or similar frameworks
- Strong intuition for prompt engineering, model testing, and evaluation methodologies
- Experience navigating complex requirements around explainability, user trust, or compliance in ML applications
- Track record of influencing architecture or product direction at a team or org level

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**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/0c6887b5-b731-427b-824c-4cfe3e62b39f
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/0c6887b5-b731-427b-824c-4cfe3e62b39f