# ML Engineer

**Company:** [Sesame](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/sesame)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA, New York, NY, Bellevue, WA
**Role:** ML Engineering
**Salary:** $190k – $320k/yr
**Experience:** 5+ years
**Skills:** PyTorch, Python, Machine Learning, LLMs, Model Training, Model Fine-Tuning, Evaluation Pipelines, Dataset Curation, Ml Deployment, Production Ml Systems
**Posted:** 2026-06-17

> Research Engineer building and deploying production voice and multimodal ML models. Requires expert PyTorch, large-scale model training experience, and shipping user-facing ML systems.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Own evaluation pipelines — design, build, and automate offline and live evals that keep our speech and multimodal models honest in production.
- Harness the data — create tooling for safe, versioned, privacy-aware dataset curation and discovery.
- Ship models, not slide decks — partner with research and infra to prototype, train, and deploy state-of-the-art voice models that power Sesame’s real-time companion experience.
- Squeeze silicon — scale training and inference for LLM-class workloads; chase latency, throughput, and cost until the graphs flatten.
- Wire up monitoring and live evals — surface quality regressions before users or PMs notice.
- Move at startup speed — take ideas from whiteboard to production in days, not quarters; leave a clean trail of tests and dashboards behind.

## Required Qualifications
- Expert-level PyTorch.
- Proven software engineer who loves ML; comfortable writing production code across the stack.
- Hands-on experience training or fine-tuning large language or other large-scale models with a variety of techniques.
- Evaluation expert — you’ve designed metrics and harnesses that actually predict user happiness.
- Deep knowledge of the ML lifecycle: dataset ops, training pipelines, eval frameworks, deployment, and monitoring.
- History of shipping complex projects to production—especially user-facing, online ML systems—despite shifting requirements and surprise roadblocks.
- High agency and the judgment to know when to sprint solo vs. pull in the squad.
- Track record of setting technical direction, driving consensus, and partnering smoothly with product, infra, and research.

## Benefits
- 401 (k) max employer match: 3.5% of compensation
- 100% employer-paid health, vision, and dental benefits for you and your dependents
- Unlimited PTO and sick time
- Flexible spending account with employer matching up to $1,650/year (medical FSA)
- Guardian Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
- Opportunity to share in the company's success with competitive stock options

## Similar roles

- [AI Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/3e81f9d7-b85f-486a-849e-d1417b241b1e) - Zoox - Foster City, CA - $190k – $250k/yr
- [Software Engineer, Applied AI](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/be4d97f1-9f2f-4973-bac2-0de1198d845e) - Norm Ai - New York, NY - $190k – $280k/yr
- [Data Scientist, Underwriting](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/4a054585-2634-407e-aa40-182679349330) - Parafin - San Francisco, CA - $190k – $300k/yr
- [Software Engineer - Behavior Capabilities](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/07184ed0-bd8d-46fe-92cd-a18258309fb4) - Zoox - Foster City, CA - $189k – $270k/yr
- [Software Engineer - Learned Trajectory Machine Learning Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/58417c3f-47c5-46eb-8ffb-27ad8502a9a3) - Zoox - Foster City, CA - $189k – $270k/yr

**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/98ad2c38-046c-4b23-9f02-cb395af69959
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/98ad2c38-046c-4b23-9f02-cb395af69959